Coastal benthic ecosystems are shaped by the combined effects of climate change and anthropogenic pressures. Ocean warming, acidification, and deoxygenation interact with eutrophication, pollution, bottom trawling, and coastal development, altering biodiversity, habitat structure, and functioning from shallow coasts to continental margins. Benthic communities, comprising infaunal and epifaunal taxa, regulate key processes including nutrient cycling, sediment dynamics, and carbon burial, thereby underpinning benthic-pelagic coupling and biogeochemical dynamics. Rising temperatures and marine heatwaves drive widespread losses of habitat-forming species, while ocean acidification constrains calcification. Warming, acidification, hypoxia, eutrophication, and pollution increasingly simplify assemblages, and alter trophic pathways and performance. Interactions among stressors can amplify organismal sensitivity and push ecosystems towards ecological thresholds. However, many knowledge gaps remain. Recent methodological advances, including environmental DNA metabarcoding, automated imaging, trait-based analyses, and multi-stressor experiments, are improving the detection of ecosystem changes at large and our mechanistic understanding of ecosystem responses to ongoing change. By summarizing the various stressors that benthic habitats and taxa face, their interactions and potential outlooks, this review provides a concise synthesis of current understanding and identifies key knowledge gaps for future research and management under accelerating climate change.
Rohlfer E. K. & Fiesinger A., 2026. Coastal benthic ecosystems in a changing ocean: a mini review. Frontiers in Marine Science 13: 1829871. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2026.1829871. Article.
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