| Session Description |
Estuaries and marginal seas are the major repositories of organic carbon (OC) in the ocean. Rivers, especially those large rivers, play a vital role in delivering a huge flux of OC from the continents to the oceans. Over the past 60 years, land-use changes in river basins, such as enhanced fertilizer usage, damming, and deforestation have had globally significant impacts on large-river systems (e.g., decreases in water and/or sediment discharge, deltaic retreat), and caused severe adverse environmental effects (e.g., coastal eutrophication, hypoxia, and harmful algal blooms) in the large-river delta-front estuaries (LDEs) and adjacent marginal seas around the world. Therefore, it is essential to understand how the flux of materials from rivers to the ocean have been altered, and the impacts, mechanisms and historical records of this alteration on the OC cycle and biogeochemical processes of the LDEs and adjacent marginal seas, particularly in the context of global change. This session intends to bring together scientists working in areas of marine biogeochemistry and organic geochemistry in order to integrate current knowledge of the sources, transport, transformation and fate of OC in LDEs and adjacent marginal seas based on the application of bulk/compound-specific isotope analyses and organic biomarkers, and the changes of OC cycle in these regions that have undergone over the Anthropocene and the resultant impact of these changes in terms of land-ocean material exchange and estuarine/coastal eco-environmental evolution. |
