This session provides a platform for cross-disciplinary science that addresses the continuum of the river and its catchment to the coastal sea. We invite studies across geographical borders; from the source to the sea including groundwater, and across the freshwater-marine water transition. The session welcomes studies that link environmental and social science, address the impacts of climate change and extreme events, and of human activities on water and sediment quality and quantity, hydromorphology, biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services of River-Sea systems, and that provide solutions for sustainable management of the River-Sea social-ecological system.
We need to fully understand how River-Sea-Systems function. How are River-Sea-Systems changing due to human pressures? What is the impact of processes in the catchment on marine systems function, and vice versa? How can we discern between human-induced changes or those driven by natural processes from climate-induced variability and extreme events? What will the tipping points of socio-ecologic system states be and what will they look like? How can we better characterise river-sea systems from the latest generation Earth observation to citizen science based observatories. How can we predict short and long term changes in River-Sea-Systems to manage them sustainably? What is the limit to which it is possible to predict the natural and human-influenced evolution of River-Sea-Systems? The increasing demand to jointly enable intensive human use and environmental protection in river-sea systems requires holistic and integrative research approaches with the ultimate goal of enhanced system understanding.