The global carbon cycle involves the flux, storage, and transformations of carbon in different forms across and within a variety of major reservoirs. Particularly, the land and the ocean carbon reservoirs are key gatekeepers controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide and Earth’s climate. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the need to understand the carbon cycle not as an isolated system within specific environments but as a dynamic and interconnected process, especially spanning the entire land-to-ocean aquatic continuum (LOAC). The LOAC—including inland waters, rivers, estuaries, tidal wetlands, and continental shelf waters—serves as a vital pathway for carbon transport and transformations. Moreover, the riverine input of carbon to the ocean remains a poorly understood yet important component of the global carbon budget. A better understanding of the carbon cycle along the LOAC is crucial to supporting the development of climate policies, projecting future climate change, and monitoring, reporting, and verifying (MRV) carbon dioxide removal interventions.
This session seeks to bring together scientists studying various forms of carbon—organic, inorganic, dissolved, and particulate — to deepen our understanding of how human activities are reshaping the carbon cycle within the LOAC. We welcome research that explores carbon dynamics in the LOAC, particularly about the changes driven by anthropogenic impacts, including but not limited to:
- Characterisation of the carbon flux from land to ocean and the impacts of human activities on that flux
- Quantifying anthropogenic-influenced carbon in inland waters and rivers, estuaries and tidal wetlands, continental shelf waters, and freshwater/coastal/marine sediments.
- Quantification of the ocean carbon sink in coastal waters
- Redistribution of carbon among different carbon forms under anthropogenic perturbations.
- Changes in biogeochemical processes due to natural variability and anthropogenic impacts that influence the LOAC carbon cycle.
- Impacts of carbon dioxide removal interventions on the LOAC carbon cycle.
We strongly encourage contributions using diverse approaches, including cruise-based observations, autonomous platform observations, and machine learning and modeling techniques.