| Session Description |
The marginal and coastal seas in the Asia Pacific, subcontinent, and Oceania regions are fed by large river systems in the world whose fluvial discharges have significant influence on the oceanographic characteristics of these seas. Additionally, small mountainous rivers in these regions with their high sediment yield, are also important sources for terrestrial input to the sea. Despite of the size difference of these rivers, most of their drainage basins are formed by tectonic activities and their fluvial hydrology heavily affected by the monsoons. Because of the regional diversity in the tectonic setting, the climate, and fluid energy dissipation, the delivery, transport, and fate of fluvial discharge in marginal and coastal seas of Asian and Oceania are complex. Our ability to quantify and predict the dispersal and fluxes of dissolved and particulate substances from land to sea over space and time requires a concerted interdisciplinary and international effort. This session is intended to provide a venue for the broad community investigating the delivery, transport and accumulation of terrestrial substances along the source-to-sink pathway in marginal and coastal seas of Asia and Oceania, including physical, biological and geochemical processes and their complex interaction with the receiving waters; and the resulting stratigraphic signature of sediment accumulation that transcends space and time. We invite contributions from the theoretical, observational and modeling communities, with the overall goal to summarize our understanding and to identify critical areas where more intra-regional collaborations are needed to further advance our current knowledge of all the issues related to the delivery, transport and fate of fluvial discharge in marginal and coastal seas that are uniquely Asian and Oceanian. |
