Editorial on the Research Topic
Eutrophication, algal bloom, hypoxia and ocean acidification in large river estuaries
Estuaries are transitional regions of river freshwater to seawater, and biogeochemical parameters such as salinity, nutrients and biological parameters typically show strong gradients in the offshore direction. Estuaries occupy a small portion of the global ocean area (about 0.2%) but play an important role for marine fisheries and contribute disproportionately to the global carbon budget. Furthermore, estuaries are under multiple strong anthropogenic and climate change pressures, such as eutrophication, wetland degradation, and overfishing, and the ecosystems of many estuaries have dramatically changed, leading to hypoxia, harmful algal blooms, ocean acidification and changes in biodiversity.
In this Research Topic, papers were solicited on estuarine systems that exemplify the changes and the complexities of interactions that are occurring in response to anthropogenic and climate change influences. The ten papers on this Research Topic focus largely–but not exclusively–on Asian waters. Asian waters are among the most rapidly changing and progressively impacted by nutrient enrichment and climate change. One of the major themes of these papers is the coupling between physical and biological processes. The themes herein of physical-biological coupling and impacts on water quality changes were also developed in papers on the Chesapeake Bay and the Salish Sea. Modeling, time series analysis and advanced analytical techniques were all brought to bear in the analyses reported.
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Chen J., Cai W.-J., Glibert P. M. & Huang D., 2022. Editorial: Eutrophication, algal bloom, hypoxia and ocean acidification in large river estuaries. Frontiers in Marine Science 9: 1005105. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2022.1005105. Article.
