The significance of long-term changes in land (and marine) management practice and their impact on carbon(C) storage/transfer in the coastal ocean are relatively poorly understood, yet the coastal ocean is increasingly recognised as a dynamic component of the global carbon budget.

Despite a significant effort to quantify terrestrial carbon stocks in recent years, the marine components (‘blue carbon’) are less well defined, but may themselves contain a very large store of sedimentary carbon. An important emerging research priority is to therefore quantify and understand the long-term stability of the marine sedimentary carbon pool; linkages to terrestrial carbon stores are increasingly important element in managing ‘blue carbon’ stocks.

This session is multidisciplinary and aims to bring together both marine and terrestrial scientists in order to promote discussion. The Session is open to experimental, observational and modelling studies that investigate the source, transport and fate of carbon in the coastal sedimentary environment. We encourage contributions focusing on:

•Tracing the source of C in the coastal environment (isotope, geochemical, biomarkers etc.).
•Transportation of C from the terrestrial to the coastal marine environment.
•The drivers of the transfer of C between the terrestrial and coastal environments (e.g. land use & climate change).
•Benthic sedimentary processes (digenesis, remineralisation etc.)
•Coastal sedimentary C accumulation and stocks
•Physical, chemical and biological vulnerability of sedimentary C to a changing environment and coastal management practices.

Efforts towards multidisciplinary approaches to answering these questions are especially welcome. Contributions that sit outside these areas of interest will be considered if they add value to the session.