The Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to well below 2°C. Meeting this goal requires robust estimates of past, present and future sources and sinks of the major greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4 and N2O). Translating the temperature target into allowable emissions depends on how land and ocean sinks respond to future change. For this, accurate present-day fluxes at national to global scales are needed to track progress towards Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and to detect emerging changes early, such as a weakening of natural sinks. Observations of past and present fluxes, in turn, constrain projections of their future evolution. Yet all of these remain limited by large uncertainties in observing and modelling GHG fluxes from regional to global scales. Quantifying the transient response to emissions and the magnitude of remaining GHG budgets requires a substantial improvement in our ability to estimate the budgets and trends of major greenhouse gases across all spatio-temporal scales.

This session aims to bring together studies to help understand and quantify past, present, and future global and regional GHG budgets in the atmosphere, the ocean, and on land, as well as processes controlling their trends and variability.

We welcome contributions using a variety of approaches, such as (national) emissions inventories, field and remotely sensed observations, terrestrial and ocean biogeochemical modeling, Earth system modeling, and inverse modeling. We encourage contributions integrating different datasets and approaches at multiple spatial (regional to global) and temporal scales (diurnal, seasonal, interannual variability and long-term trends) that provide new insights on processes influencing GHG budgets and trends in the past, present and future.

The global nitrogen cycle is a fundamental component of the Earth system, influencing terrestrial and marine ecosystem productivity, atmospheric chemistry and climate dynamics. Anthropogenic perturbations have profoundly altered this cycle, leading to environmental challenges such as greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and eutrophication. Despite decades of research, significant uncertainties remain in quantifying the key fluxes and transformations of nitrogen across the terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric domains. Addressing these challenges requires an Earth system perspective that integrates diverse insights into a coherent global framework and ensures robust representation of nitrogen–carbon–climate interactions in Earth System Models (ESMs).
This session invites contributions that advance understanding of the global nitrogen cycle, its regional and global budget closure, its interactions with carbon, water and climate, including studies that:
• Quantify nitrogen fluxes (N₂O, NH₃, NOx, N₂, BNF, lateral N) across atmosphere, vegetation, soil, and aquatic/marine systems.
• Reconcile regional and global nitrogen budgets using observations, inversions, process-based models, and data-driven approaches.
• Evaluate uncertainties, benchmarking strategies, and emergent constraints for nitrogen–carbon and nitrogen–climate interactions in ESMs and Integrated Assessment Models.
• Assess nitrogen’s role in regulating air and freshwater pollution, land carbon sinks, climate feedbacks, and mitigation pathways.
• Provide synthesis-level insights relevant to global assessments (e.g., IPCC).
By emphasizing budget closure, cross-domain integration, and benchmarking frameworks, this session provides a platform for advancing global nitrogen cycle research and strengthening its connections to Earth system modeling and sustainability challenges.

Anthropogenic disturbance of the global nitrogen (N) cycle has more than doubled the amount of reactive N circulating in the terrestrial biosphere alone. Exchange of reactive/non-reactive nitrogen gases between land and atmosphere are strongly affecting Earth’s atmospheric composition, air quality, global warming, climate change and human health. This session seeks to improve our understanding of a) how intensification of reactive N use, land management and climate change affects the pools and fluxes of nitrogen in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, b) and how reactive N enrichment of land and water will affect the future carbon sink of natural ecosystems as well as atmospheric exchanges of reactive (NO, N2O, NH3, HONO, NO2 and non-reactive N (N2) gases with implications for global warming, climate change and air quality. We welcome contributions covering a wide range of experimental and modelling studies, which covers microbes-mediated and physico-chemical transformations and transport of nitrogen across the land-water-air continuum in natural ecosystems from local to regional and global scales. Furthermore, the interactions of nitrogen with other elemental cycles (e.g. phosphorus, carbon) and the impacts of these interactive feedbacks for soil health, biodiversity and water and air quality will be explored in this session. Latest developments in methodological innovations and observational and experimental approaches for unravelling the complexities of nitrogen transformations and transport will also be of interest.

Direct anthropogenic perturbations of the P cycle, coupled with other human-induced stresses, is one of the biggest threats to global Earth functioning today. Widespread application of P fertilizers has changed the P cycle from relatively closed to a much more “leaky” cycle, with increased P losses to aquatic ecosystems, influencing their trophic state. Meanwhile, forest ecosystems may be losing their ability to recycle P efficiently, due to excessive N input, extensive biomass removal, and climatic stress. Throughout geological history, P availability has regulated biological productivity with impacts on the global carbon cycle. Climate change and its mitigation affect and will further alter global P cycles.

This interdisciplinary session invites contributions to the study of P from all disciplines, and aims to foster collaborations between researchers working on different aspects of the P cycle. We target a balanced session giving equal weight across the continuum of environments in the P cycle, from agriculture, forests, soils and groundwater, through lakes, rivers and estuaries, to oceans, marine sediments and geological P deposits. We welcome both empirical studies furthering process-level understanding of P cycling and modeling studies leveraging that knowledge to larger spatial scales.

Methane emissions are produced by a variety of natural and anthropogenic sources across different ecosystems, spatial scales and time periods. Quantifying these emissions and removals, and understanding their variability is challenging as the production, oxidation, transport and emission of methane are influenced by a variety of interactions between biological, physical and human disturbance processes. There is also a significant lack of observations in key regions that have been estimated to be major sources, such as tropical forests and heterogeneous Arctic landscapes. Thus, there remains substantial mismatch between bottom-up and top-down estimates, particularly for natural sources such as wetlands, peatlands, inland waters, permafrost and other ecosystems, as well as uncertainties in methane atmospheric oxidation and consumption by bacteria in the soil.
This session aims to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and improve our understanding of methane sources and sinks, their variability, and associated uncertainties across spatial and temporal scales. We encourage studies applying a variety of complementary observational, experimental and modelling approaches, from ecosystem measurements, such as chamber and eddy-covariance techniques, and remote sensing, to inventories, process-based models and Earth system models, as well as atmospheric observations and inversions. We particularly welcome studies that explore upscaling of measurements from ecosystem and landscape scales to integration within regional and global methane budgets, as well as studies that identify and reduce uncertainties in methane source estimates. We welcome contributions addressing all sources of methane with a particular focus on improving the quantification and understanding of the processes involved in natural methane emissions, as well as their representation in models and global budgets.

Tropical wetlands provide ecosystem services worth billions of dollars annually through flood regulation, water purification, carbon storage, fisheries, and biodiversity support, while also emitting globally significant amounts of methane. Significant uncertainties remain in our understanding of the processes linking catchment-scale hydrodynamics, seasonal inundation, wetland vegetation, biogeochemistry, and atmospheric greenhouse gas fluxes across tropical wetland landscapes.

These uncertainties limit our ability to predict how a warmer and wetter climate may alter tropical wetland methane emissions. Improving process-level understanding of this coupled hydrological-ecological-biogeochemical system is essential for constraining a potentially important, yet poorly characterised, wetland-climate feedback in the Earth system.

We welcome contributions spanning field observations, laboratory experiments, remote sensing, data assimilation, modelling, and theory. Topics include wetland hydrology and inundation dynamics; vegetation structure, function, and environmental responses; methane production, oxidation, transport, and emissions; carbon cycling; land-atmosphere interactions; and the impacts of climate variability, extremes, and land-use change.

We particularly encourage interdisciplinary studies that link processes across scales, from microbial and plant dynamics to regional and global assessments. Contributions that improve the representation of tropical wetlands in Earth system models, develop novel observational capabilities, or integrate in situ, airborne, and satellite datasets are especially encouraged.

New theoretical approaches, grounded in field observations and experimental manipulations, are increasingly providing improved understanding the response of organisms to environmental changes, for processes operating at organ level, through whole organisms to ecosystems. This provides a basis for addressing functional biodiversity within communities, the different timescales of ecosystem response to changing environments, and the feedbacks between ecosystems and their environment. Since these changes and feedbacks regulate carbon, nutrient and energy flows, this in turn provides a basis for developing new and simpler models of the biosphere and its interactions in the earth system.

Addressing these complex issues requires and interdisciplinary perspective. This session will explore new approaches to understanding the two-way interactions between the biosphere and it environment across terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems – encompassing observational, theory and modelling perspectives. We invite contributions that examine shifts in traits and community composition across different ecosystems. We welcome contributions that address this through experiments, observations, empirical analysis and conceptual, eco-evolutionary or process-based modelling. By examining work on soil communities, terrestrial vegetation and freshwater and marine ecosystems, the session aims to foster a cross-system perspective on ecosystem functioning.

Fire is a fundamental Earth system process and a major driver of terrestrial ecosystem change, with cascading effects on the atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, biogeochemical cycles, and human societies. Changes in climate, vegetation, land use, and human activity are in turn altering fire regimes, creating complex feedbacks across spatial and temporal scales. Understanding these coupled interactions is therefore essential for assessing the role of fire in a rapidly changing Earth system, particularly as the frequency, intensity, and impacts of extreme fire events increase in many regions.
This session brings together interdisciplinary research investigating fire–Earth system interactions across the past, present, and future. We welcome studies using observations, remote sensing, proxy records, field and laboratory measurements, statistical and process-based models, artificial intelligence, and data–model fusion approaches, spanning local to global scales.
We particularly encourage contributions addressing interactions between fire and: (1) weather, climate, atmospheric composition, chemistry, and circulation; (2) vegetation dynamics, ecosystem structure and function, terrestrial and ocean biogeochemical cycles; (3) cryospheric processes and components, including permafrost and sea ice; and (4) human health, land management, conservation, livelihoods, and other societal dimensions. We also welcome studies of (5) past, present, and projected changes in fire regimes, with particular emphasis on extreme and compound fire events; (6) fire datasets, products, and models, including validation, uncertainty, bias assessment, and correction; and (7) analytical and predictive tools that support fire monitoring, situational awareness, early warning, and decision-making.
By bringing together perspectives from across the Earth and environmental sciences, the session aims to advance an integrated understanding of fire as both a response to and a driver of Earth system change, and to identify emerging challenges and opportunities for predicting and managing fire in a changing world.

Extreme fire events have become increasingly frequent all over the world, as seen in recent fire seasons in Turkey, Southern Europe, Brazil, Chile, California, South Korea, and Canada. These extreme fire events have disproportionate impacts on society and all components of the Earth system, yet much remains to be understood about their characteristics, drivers, links to climate change, methods for quantifying their impacts, and effective mitigation and prevention strategies.

A key area of research is how extreme fires are represented in fire models. Their stochastic behaviour, uncertainties in observations, and the difficulty of capturing local processes within global frameworks make simulating extremes and their impacts a persistent challenge for coupled models. Emerging big data and machine learning approaches show promise in capturing such events but remain limited in their ability to represent feedback to vegetation, soils, and the broader Earth system.

This session also invites case studies of regional extreme wildfire events, their impacts, and experiences with prevention and mitigation strategies from around the world. We welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including global, regional, and landscape-scale modelling; statistical and process-based modelling; observational and field studies; and social science research on all time scales. Our goal is to foster knowledge exchange across disciplines and between scientists, decision-makers, and practitioners, to advance our collective ability to understand, model, and respond to the challenges posed by present and future extreme wildfires.

Climate extremes, including heatwaves, droughts, heavy rains, floods, storms, wildfires and compound events, are becoming more frequent and intense under ongoing climate change. These events can exert strong, nonlinear and persistent effects on greenhouse gas fluxes (CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O) variabilities, altering carbon and nitrogen cycling from short-lived emission pulses to ecosystem changes lasting years or decades. However, the mechanisms controlling these responses across spatial and temporal scales remain poorly understood, creating substantial uncertainty in predictions of biosphere–atmosphere feedbacks.
This session invites observational, experimental and modelling studies examining greenhouse gas dynamics during and following climate extremes across terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems, including tundra, forests, wetlands, grasslands, croplands, rivers, lakes and oceans. We welcome contributions using in situ measurements, eddy covariance, chamber observations, isotopic techniques, experimental manipulations, process-based and Earth system models, satellite or airborne remote sensing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and causal-inference methods. Studies integrating multiple approaches are particularly encouraged, especially those seeking to identify underlying mechanisms, quantify resistance, resilience and legacy effects, or upscale responses from organisms and ecosystems to regional and global scales.
By bringing together diverse disciplines and methods, this session aims to identify common and contrasting greenhouse gas responses to climate extremes, showcase methodological advances and define critical knowledge gaps. Ultimately, we seek to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration and improve predictions of greenhouse gas exchange under an increasingly extreme climate.

This session focuses on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at the biosphere-atmosphere interface, encompassing innovative analytical methods, laboratory and field studies, and emission modeling approaches. We invite contributions on plant and other biogenic VOC emission sources (e.g., from soil, litter, and freshwater) under environmental changes, methodological advances in sampling and analysis techniques, and modeling frameworks that bridge experimental observations with atmospheric processes.

Ecosystem respiration is a fundamental flux in the global carbon cycle, yet its full interpretation remains constrained by the incomplete consideration of the counterflow of atmospheric oxygen (O₂) into soils—the so-called "forgotten half" of the respiratory process. The respiration quotient (RQ = CO₂ produced / O₂ consumed) offers a unique, integrative signal that reflects not only microbial metabolic activity but also the interplay of biotic processes, abiotic gas transport, and redox dynamics across scales—from microbial communities to entire ecosystems. RQ values deviate in many cases from the simple expectations of RQ ~1.0, indicating the influence of diverse processes such as fermentation, nitrification, mineral weathering, and incomplete mixing.
Despite its potential, RQ remains underutilized in many fields of research from the microscale to large-scale ecological and atmospheric studies due to the technical challenges of high-precision O₂ measurements— which is necessary especially given the high atmospheric background (20.95%). To overcome this, we want to bring together people and ideas of different fields who try to tackle this challenge and answer questions related to the CO₂ - O₂ exchange of the living but also non-living environment.
We invite atmospheric scientists, microbial ecologists, and biogeochemists to join this emerging frontier: where the subtle interplay of CO₂ and O₂ fluxes reveals the hidden logic of ecosystem respiration—from the microscale of microbial metabolism to the macroscale of global carbon budgets. This session lays the foundation for a new generation of integrated, process-based monitoring networks that connect the biosphere’s breath to the atmosphere’s pulse.

Sitting under a tree, you feel the spark of an idea, and suddenly everything falls into place. The following days and tests confirm: you have made a magnificent discovery — so the classical story of scientific genius goes…

But science as a human activity is error-prone, and might be more adequately described as "trial and error". Handling mistakes and setbacks is therefore a key skill of scientists. Yet, we publish only those parts of our research that did work. That is also because a study may have better chances to be accepted for scientific publication if it confirms an accepted theory or reaches a positive result (publication bias). Conversely, the cases that fail in their test of a new method or idea often end up in a drawer (which is why publication bias is also sometimes called the "file drawer effect"). This is potentially a waste of time and resources within our community, as other scientists may set about testing the same idea or model setup without being aware of previous failed attempts.

Thus, we want to turn the story around, and ask you to share 1) those ideas that seemed magnificent but turned out not to be, and 2) the errors, bugs, and mistakes in your work that made the scientific road bumpy. In the spirit of open science and in an interdisciplinary setting, we want to bring the BUGS out of the drawers and into the spotlight. What ideas were torn down or did not work, and what concepts survived in the ashes or were robust despite errors?

We explicitly solicit Blunders, Unexpected Glitches, and Surprises (BUGS) from modeling and field or lab experiments and from all disciplines of the Geosciences.

In a friendly atmosphere, we will learn from each other’s mistakes, understand the impact of errors and abandoned paths on our work, give each other ideas for shared problems, and generate new insights for our science or scientific practice.

Here are some ideas for contributions that we would love to see:
- Ideas that sounded good at first, but turned out to not work.
- Results that presented themselves as great in the first place but turned out to be caused by a bug or measurement error.
- Errors and slip-ups that resulted in insights.
- Failed experiments and negative results.
- Obstacles and dead ends you found and would like to warn others about.

For inspiration, see the collection of BUGS - ranging from clay bricks to atmospheric temperature extremes - at https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/session/52496

Aeolian processes operate across a myriad of spatial and temporal scales both on Earth and other planetary bodies. Interactions among geochemical, atmospheric, hydrologic, biological, cyrospheric, and soil processes shape aeolian dynamics and landforms, generating feedbacks that influence evolution across scales. Yet the controls governing aeolian transport, soil erosion, dust emission, and the resulting landforms are complex, interconnected, and remain incompletely understood. Bridging observations and understanding across spatial and temporal scales is therefore critical to advancing our understanding of aeolian systems and their evolution. This session brings together research traversing the spectrum of scale, from long term landscape evolution modelling to small-scale process studies. It will be of interest to researchers that study wind-driven processes and associated bedforms in a range of environments, including, coastal, arid and hyper arid regions, vegetated landscapes, icy beds, and planetary environments. Contributions employing novel instrumentation in field or laboratory studies, remote sensing, innovative numerical modelling, theoretical approaches, or combinations of these methods are encouraged.

The current energy, climate, and geopolitical crises underscore the urgent need to develop carbon-free natural resources, with natural hydrogen as one of the most promising candidates. However, fundamental knowledge gaps persist regarding the complex, interconnected geological, geochemical, and microbiological processes that govern its generation, migration, accumulation, preservation, and seepage. This session aims to improve our understanding of the natural hydrogen cycle through the integrated interpretation of multi-scale (from laboratory to field scale) and multi-disciplinary observations. Contributions should present novel or established methods to: 1) reliably distinguish geological from non-geological (microbial and artificial) hydrogen sources; 2) link surface geochemical, microbiological and/or geophysical signatures to subsurface processes and migration pathways; 3) quantify the hydrogen generation and consumption/degradation rates to assess its potential as a sustainable energy resource; and 4) Improve current models of the natural hydrogen cycle. We invite contributions from researchers applying surface geochemical, microbiological, subsurface geophysical exploration techniques, as well as integrated multi-disciplinary approaches including modelling to reduce ambiguities in data interpretation and improve predictive capabilities for natural hydrogen systems.

Tiny changes in tree stem radius, often only a few micrometres, contain a wealth of information about tree growth dynamics, water status and responses to environmental stress at hourly, daily or seasonal timescales. Dendrometers provide this data, in some cases with near-real time online access. A network of dendrometers over larger regions allows monitoring of biological dynamics of forests across ecosystems and species ranges, identifying trends, disentangling stressors, and more. To bring together dendrometer users, create synergies, and foster collaboration, we are in the process of establishing a global dendrometer network (https://globaldendro.org/), accompanied by a metadatabase with easy-to-access information about region, species coverage, number and type of dendrometers, and more. In this session, we invite contributions to share ideas, results and discuss implications from all areas of dendrometer-related research, including but not limited to
- Forest productivity
- Dendrometers and carbon sequestration
- Dendrometers and water regulation
- Comparison of dendrometer types
- Dendrometers to build drought stress indicators
- Dendrometers and remote sensing proxies
- Methodological developments for dendrometer data analysis

We welcome contributions that use stable isotopes of light elements (C, H, O, N, S) and novel tracers (e.g., COS) to advance our understanding of biogeochemical and atmospheric processes. We invite studies based on field and laboratory experiments, analytical and instrumental developments, theoretical approaches, and modelling. We particularly welcome contributions addressing:

Isotopologues of carbon dioxide (CO₂), water (H₂O), methane (CH₄), carbon monoxide (CO), oxygen (O₂), carbonyl sulfide (COS), and nitrous oxide (N₂O)
Novel tracers and biological analogues
Polyisotopologues, including clumped isotopes
Non-mass-dependent isotopic fractionation and related isotope anomalies
Intramolecular stable isotope distributions and isotopomer abundances
Quantification and interpretation of isotope effects
Analytical, methodological, instrumental, and modelling developments
Isotope-based flux measurements

This session is open to all contributions in biogeochemistry and ecology where stable isotope techniques are used as analytical tools, with foci both on stable isotopes of light elements (C, H, O, N, S, …) and new systems (clumped and metal isotopes). We welcome studies from both terrestrial and marine, aquatic and sedimentary environments as well as methodological, experimental and theoretical studies that introduce new approaches or techniques (including natural abundance work, labeling studies, modeling).
 Results from the successful EGU session that took place earlier have been published in several special issues of Organic Geochemistry and Isotopes in Environmental & Health Studies.

This session aims to unite scientists employing stable isotope analyses of light elements (e.g., carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen) to address ecophysiological questions concerning climate change and other abiotic and biotic stressors.

We invite researchers studying a variety of compounds (e.g., lipids, cellulose, lignin, non-structural carbohydrates, water) from both aquatic/marine (e.g., fish, micro and macroalgae) and terrestrial (e.g., mosses, grasses, crops, trees) ecosystems. Contributions that explore any spatiotemporal scale and use archival materials (e.g., herbarium samples, peat, sediments, loess, tree rings) are particularly welcome.

Researchers utilizing a range of analytical techniques (e.g. IRMS, NMR, Orbitrap and spectroscopy-based methods), as well as different isotope techniques (e.g. natural abundance work, labelling studies, modeling) are encouraged to present their methodological advancements.

By showcasing cutting-edge research and methodological innovations, we aim to highlight the crucial role of stable isotope analysis in ecophysiological studies and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. We look forward to your contributions to this exciting and dynamic session.

Understanding the dynamics of the terrestrial carbon cycle is essential for developing strategies to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and mitigate global warming. Although this topic is extensively studied, key uncertainties remain—particularly regarding the temporal dynamics of the carbon cycle and how long carbon persists in terrestrial ecosystems after assimilation. Addressing these gaps is critical for a deeper understanding of carbon cycle processes.

The temporal dimension of the carbon cycle emerges from how carbon moves through ecosystems. Carbon enters via photosynthesis and is initially allocated to fast-cycling pools, where much of it is rapidly returned to the atmosphere. Only a fraction is gradually transferred to slow-cycling soil pools, where it can persist for years to centuries. The efficiency of this transfer depends on plant allocation strategies, microbial processing, soil properties, and climate.

This session explores how carbon isotopic tracers improve our understanding of carbon accumulation, transfer, and retention over time. Stable carbon isotopes (δ¹³C) trace recent carbon assimilation and allocation (from hours to days), while radiocarbon (∆¹⁴C) provides insights into carbon age and persistence over years to centuries.

We welcome contributions that use natural and induced carbon tracers—both stable and radioactive isotopes—across in situ and laboratory experiments, as well as modeling approaches. Studies investigating carbon allocation, transfer among pools, and retention in different terrestrial pools are encouraged, including those aiming to understand the variables driving the temporal dynamics of these processes. All types of terrestrial ecosystems and spatial scales are welcome.

By bringing together recent advances in the use of carbon isotopes, this session aims to enhance understanding of the temporal dynamics of carbon in terrestrial ecosystems and identify key knowledge gaps under ongoing environmental change.

Organic molecules preserved in sediments and other environmental archives record the organisms, environment, and process-specific dynamics from which they originated. Interpreting their signals, however, requires disentangling biological, physical, and chemical overprints from the original signal. Lipid biomarkers from diverse source organisms spanning archaea, bacteria, algae and higher plants to animals, together with their stable isotopic composition, remain one of the most powerful tools for this work. Analyses often integrate various compound classes such as n-alkanes, fatty acids, alkenones, sterols, hopanoids, HBIs (Highly Branched Isoprenoids), HGs (Heterocyst Glycolipids), GDGTs (Glycerol Dialkyl Glycerol Tetraethers), and intact polar lipids, applied across settings ranging from modern process studies to deep-time reconstructions.
This session draws together biomarker-based research across terrestrial, lacustrine, marine and anthropogenically influenced environments. We encourage submissions of studies using new biomarker tools, proxy development, compound-specific isotope analyses (e.g., δ¹³C, δ²H, δ18O, Δ¹⁴C), lipid biosynthesis and phylogeny of source organisms, and transport and diagenetic processes.
We also invite studies applying biomarker and isotopic evidence to reconstruct environmental variables such as temperature, hydroclimate, vegetation change, human impact, and biogeochemical cycling across modern and past environments. We particularly encourage contributions from early-career scientists.

Global change and anthropogenic influences pose complex, multi-layered challenges to terrestrial ecosystems. Consequently, essential ecosystem functions and services are threatened, with negative impacts on key areas such as food production in agroecosystems. To analyze these dynamics, multidimensional environmental experiments are becoming essential. Within this context, ecotrons enable the controlled manipulation and observation of ecosystem components and processes, while weighing lysimeters deliver highly precise, high-resolution measurements of soil water balance dynamics. Enhanced by state-of-the-art control and monitoring systems – such as temperature regulation (heating/cooling), elevated CO2 regimes, non-destructive root monitoring, and stable isotope technologies to trace water, gas, and nutrient fluxes – these platforms allow the simulation and investigation of complex, realistic (future) scenarios. In combination, ecotrons and lysimeters close a gap in the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Continuum (SPAC), enabling a holistic, integrated system view.

We invite contributions that utilize these experimental platforms or similar techniques to address fundamental and applied questions in the fields of ecosystem research, soil science, hydrology, biogeochemistry, plant ecology, agricultural sciences, and climate impact research. We welcome contributions on the following topics (including but not limited to):

(1) Processes in the SPAC: analyzing water, nutrient, and gas fluxes, including non-rainfall water inputs (e.g., dew, fog, soil water vapor adsorption).

(2) Ecosystem functioning and multi-stress analyses: assessing and comparing ecosystem functions under controlled conditions (e.g., by decoupling individual environmental drivers and analyzing combined stressors).

(3) Scaling, representativeness, and validation: approaches for upscaling to the landscape scale, comparisons with other in-situ instruments, representativeness and uncertainty assessments, and validation studies (e.g., via remote sensing).

(4) Modeling ecosystem processes: application and advancement of hydrological and ecosystem models directly utilizing high-resolution in-situ data from ecotrons and lysimeters.

(5) Methodological and technological developments: innovations in ecotron and lysimeter technology, including approaches and algorithms for data processing.

European peatlands are a major emitter of greenhouse gasses, particularly carbon dioxide and methane, contributing to climate warming. Monitoring these emissions is essential to understand their contribution to emission budgets and to design effective mitigation strategies. Greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands are currently accounted for by countries through mandatory national greenhouse gas inventory reporting. However as emission reduction targets become more ambitious and the targeted reduction deadlines approach, the need for reliable and robust monitoring systems is increasing. In addition, the growing number of peatland restoration projects and carbon crediting schemes also require reliable, transparent and spatially explicit monitoring systems. Peatland greenhouse gas emissions are highly variable in both time and space and measurement techniques come with considerable uncertainty, challenging the applicability of current approaches. Furthermore substantial differences exists between countries in monitoring methods and reporting approaches, hampering international comparisons and the harmonisation of emission estimates.
This sessions aims to bring together researchers who contribute directly or indirectly to peatland greenhouse gas monitoring to exchange ideas and share best practices from across Europe and beyond. We invite contributions focusing on the development and application of methods and tools for peatland greenhouse gas monitoring. Both contributions discussing current practices and those presenting novel approaches are welcome. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, process-based modelling, greenhouse gas measurement networks, monitoring methodologies, mapping products and approaches, monitoring requirements, and supporting research that advances peatland greenhouse gas assessment.
This session is supported by the European Peatland Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Group.

Soils sustain complex patterns of life and act as biogeochemical reactors that produce and consume large quantity of gases, including greenhouse gases, biogenic volatile organic compounds, nitrous acid etc. Interactions with primary producer activity add further complexity to the ongoing gas exchange between soils, ecosystems and the atmosphere. Measurements of gas exchange are not only relevant for deriving emission factors for GHG accounting, for example for agricultural systems, which are central for climate mitigation actions. Such measurements are also important for understanding the underlying processes and their drivers. New technologies including automated chamber systems are developing fast and produce large, high-frequency datasets consisting of thousands of flux measurements of greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. They enable new insights into key biogeochemical cycles and their temporal and spatial regulation. However, the increased amount of data also creates a need for new methodologies for raw data processing, data curation, and data analysis to harness the complexity in these data sets. We are looking for abstracts on innovative analyses of the drivers of the gases production/consumption and transport in the ecosystems including field and laboratory studies utilising automated systems for measuring surface-atmosphere GHG exchange, novel processing and analytical approaches and modelling studies based on automated chamber data.

The quadrupole mass spectrometer, originally developed as a mass filter in the 1950s, has since evolved into an adaptable tool across research and industry. Its unique ability to monitor gaseous compounds over an exceptionally wide concentration range—from ppb to percent levels (to 100%)—sets it apart from gas-specific sensors, enabling comprehensive, real-time analysis of complex gas mixtures. Modern quadrupoles offer improved response times and detection limits, making in-situ measurements feasible even in dynamic experimental environments.
In this session, we invite contributions that highlight the expanding applications of quadrupole mass spectrometry. Specifically, in the areas of:
• Stable isotope analysis,
• Real-time monitoring of analytes,
• Respiration analysis with bio reactors, or
• Innovative uses of the technology for analyzing both gaseous and aqueous components

The research presented should underscore the ongoing evolution of quadrupole mass spectrometry as a key analytical technique, opening new avenues for research and industrial applications.

Accurately representing land-atmosphere interactions remains one of the key challenges in Earth system science. Process-based models, including land surface components of Earth System Models and dynamic global vegetation models, encode our understanding of these interactions and underpin projections of current and future climate. They also provide essential insight into carbon and water dynamics within ecosystems and help us extract richer information from our ever-growing observations. Yet advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence show that significant performance gains remain within reach. Harnessing these tools for modelling and understanding land-atmosphere interactions is of great potential to keep process-based models fit for purpose and at the cutting edge, supporting more robust climate projections. Robust benchmarking frameworks and rigorous comparisons are essential to evaluate, track and quality-control their applications.

This session invites contributions exploring how machine learning, artificial intelligence, and benchmarking can help address these challenges and accelerate model development. We welcome a broad range of perspectives, including: new AI-driven approaches to closing knowledge gaps; advances in benchmarking and model evaluation; physics-informed machine learning frameworks for operational use, process discovery and understanding; the growing role of emulators in model development and application; and the development of novel observational products and datasets. By bringing together researchers across disciplines, the session aims to highlight emerging opportunities for building more robust, reliable, and insightful land-surface models.

The body of remotely sensed observations is growing, while Earth system models move to km-scales. Together, these tendencies require land surface models to integrate heterogeneous observations, address incomplete process knowledge, and overcome computational constraints. Machine learning (ML) offers tools for addressing these challenges, and has demonstrated a strong ability to learn complex non-linear relationships from data when high-quality data is available. However, many land surface applications do not meet this condition and must instead rely on sparse, irregular, or imbalanced observations or represent processes that are only partially observable. Hybrid and AI-enabled models combine the flexibility of ML with physics-based knowledge to produce predictions that are both data-informed and physically constrained. The spectrum of physics-ML integration ranges from a physical model core that is extended by ML for parameterization, data assimilation, emulation, or bias correction, to an ML model core that is constrained through physical pretraining, regularization, causal pathways, or explicit equations. When and how physics-ML fusion is useful is highly use-case specific, and its potential for operationalisation is an open question. This session brings together researchers from ecosystem and land surface modeling, boundary layer meteorology, hydrology, Earth observation, and Earth system data science across this spectrum.

We welcome contributions including but not limited to:
hybrid process-ML models and learned process representations;
emulators, surrogate models, and reduced-order land model representations;
discovery of governing scientific equations from data;
differentiable and end-to-end trainable modelling frameworks;
AI-based models hard- or soft-constrained by physical principles or causal structure;
model-data integration, data assimilation, and uncertainty quantification.

We also encourage work on neural operators, foundation models, digital twins, and other AI-enabled approaches to land, ecosystem, and hydrological dynamics - especially studies that systematically compare modelling strategies, assess generalization and physical consistency, or identify conditions when physics-ML integration succeeds or fails.

Stable, radiogenic, and radioactive isotopes are fundamental tools for understanding Earth’s climate system. Isotopic measurements trace the chemical reactions, mass transfers, and biogeochemical cycles that link climate to other components of the Earth system, and they underpin many past climate reconstructions. Analytical advances, such as triple oxygen isotopes and compound-specific isotope analysis, are opening new avenues for scientific study, while established isotopic methods are steadily being applied to new archives and environmental settings. This session welcomes researchers developing and applying isotopic tools for past and present climate studies. We encourage contributions presenting new analytical methods, calibration and proxy advances, applications to new or underused archives, and modern studies that improve the interpretation of isotopic records. We also welcome studies that integrate isotopic data with geochemical, geomorphic, or climatological evidence, including multi-proxy archive studies, or with modelling approaches such as source mixing and isotope-enabled climate models.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) has become a popular biological survey tool, but its potential as a tracer of water and sediment transport remains underexplored. Understanding how eDNA signals are generated, mobilized, degraded, and preserved in water is essential not only for tracking biodiversity, but might reveal flow paths, residence time, sediment origin, and connectivity across hydrological and geophysical systems. This session is dedicated to exploring eDNA as a tracer of transport, discussing it alongside the established toolkit of hydrological tracers, including stable water isotopes, hydrochemistry, and particles such as fluorescent microspheres, bacteriophages, and spores. Recent work has demonstrated the feasibility of using eDNA to characterize flow paths and catchment response in Alpine and urban systems, and of incorporating eDNA sampling directly into hydrological monitoring and time series studies. Our primary focus is on recent-time eDNA signals in freshwater and surface waters, but we also welcome contributions that link present-day eDNA patterns to longer-term records preserved in sediment archives. Beyond rivers, we are interested in studies from wetlands, groundwater, and even lakes, coastal waters, and oceans.

Presentations in this session will address the methodologies, applications, and implications of eDNA for understanding the movement, persistence, and transformation of genetic tracer material within hydrological and geophysical systems. We encourage contributions that investigate how eDNA distribution is shaped by transport mechanisms, degradation kinetics, and environmental drivers such as flow, sediment, and biogeochemistry and what that knowledge can reveal about the underlying physical processes. Studies that integrate laboratory analyses, modeling, or sediment archives to connect scales and processes are particularly welcome. We also seek contributions that push the boundaries of how eDNA is observed. This includes innovative sampling strategies such as custom-built sensors and passive samplers, automated or distributed collection networks, and citizen science approaches that expand the spatial and temporal characterization of eDNA signal transport, concentration, and decay. By bringing together diverse systems and approaches, this session aims to advance eDNA as a tool for tracing physical transport processes, fostering new interdisciplinary collaborations between hydrology, sedimentology, and molecular methods.

The terrestrial vegetation carbon balance is controlled not just by photosynthesis, but by respiration, carbon allocation, turnover (comprising litterfall, background mortality and disturbances) and wider vegetation dynamics. Recently observed changes in vegetation structure and functioning are the result of these processes and their interactions with atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, nutrient availability, climate, and human activities. Their quantification and assessment has proven extremely challenging because of a lack of observations at the spatio-temporal scales needed for evaluating trends and projecting them into the future.

This limited observational base gives rise to high uncertainty regarding the future terrestrial carbon sink. Many questions need answer to determine if this negative feedback to climate change will be sustained under future environmental changes, or whether increases in autotrophic respiration or carbon turnover might counteract it, for example through accelerated tree mortality or more frequent and more severe disturbance events (e.g. drought, fire, insect outbreaks). Shifts in the dynamics of plant mortality, establishment, and growth are expected to significantly influence forest composition.

Uncertainties and/or data gaps in large-scale empirical products of vegetation dynamics, carbon fluxes and stocks may be overcome by extensive collections of field data and new satellite retrievals of forest biomass and other vegetation properties. Such novel datasets may be used to evaluate, develop and parametrize global vegetation models and hence to constrain present and future simulations of vegetation dynamics. Where no observations exist, exploratory modelling can investigate realistic responses and identify priorities for field and experimental campaigns. We welcome contributions that make use of observational approaches, vegetation models, or model-data integration techniques to advance understanding of the effects of environmental change on vegetation dynamics, tree mortality as well as carbon stocks and fluxes at local, regional or global scales and/or over long periods.

Plant traits extend Earth observations to the level of individual organisms, providing a critical link between biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and biogeochemical modeling under rapid global change. However, bridging the temporal and spatial mismatches between plant trait data and biogeochemical cycles remains a major challenge.

This session addresses the role of plant traits, biodiversity, acclimation, and adaptation in regulating the biogeochemical cycles of water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur across scales. We welcome conceptual, observational, experimental, and modeling studies from local to global levels, including in situ and remote sensing approaches.

Terrestrial ecosystems are responding to rapid environmental change, but merely observing an ecosystem response does not necessarily reveal the processes responsible for it. Similar changes in carbon uptake, nutrient cycling, plant growth or soil processes can arise from different, interacting mechanisms. With the increasingly detailed information provided by ecosystem monitoring and measurement, a central challenge for ecosystem science arises: how can we use experiments and observations to distinguish different mechanisms, test their consequences, and improve our ability to predict ecosystem change?

This session focuses on approaches that move from documenting ecosystem responses towards identifying and testing the mechanisms that generate them. We welcome studies that combine experiments, observations, data synthesis and modelling to investigate alternative process hypotheses, discriminate between mechanisms, identify missing processes, or constrain model parameters and structure.

Studies may consider responses to elevated CO₂, climate change, altered nutrient availability or combinations of environmental changes, with focus on the mechanisms underlying ecosystem responses rather than on individual global-change drivers.

The gross photosynthetic CO2 uptake is the largest component of the global carbon cycle. It is a crucial variable for monitoring and understanding global biogeochemical cycles along with fundamental ecosystem services. Nowadays, routine measurements of the net biosphere-atmosphere CO2 exchange are conducted at the ecosystem scale in a large variety of ecosystem types worldwide. Gross photosynthetic and ecosystem respiratory fluxes are typically inferred from the net CO2 exchange and used for benchmarking of terrestrial biosphere models, or as backbones for upscaling exercises. One major source of uncertainty in predictions of ecosystem-atmosphere feedbacks under climate change is the response of photosynthesis and respiration to changes in environmental conditions. Furthermore, transpiration estimates are highly uncertain at ecosystem to global scales, with estimates ranging from 20 % to 90 % of total evapotranspiration. The most important bottleneck in narrowing down transpiration estimates is the fact that direct measurements of transpiration are uncertain and techniques like eddy covariance measure only the total evapotranspiration. During the last decade, technological developments in field spectroscopy have enabled alternative approaches for constraining ecosystem-scale photosynthesis, respiration and transpiration. These include remote and proximal sensing of sun-induced fluorescence, as well as isotope flux measurements and quantum cascade laser-based trace gas measurements, including carbonyl sulfide as a proxy for GPP. Additionally, a variety of other approaches have been developed to directly assess the gross fluxes of CO2 and transpiration by using both process based and empirical models, as well as machine learning techniques.
In this session, we aim at reviewing recent progress made with novel approaches of constraining ecosystem gross primary productivity, respiration and transpiration. We will discuss their weaknesses and future steps required to reduce the uncertainty of present-day estimates. To this end, we invite contributions that use emerging constraints to improve the ability to quantify respiration and photosynthesis processes, transpiration and water use efficiency, from leaf to ecosystem and global scales.

We have an urgent need to understand and predict terrestrial ecosystem responses to global change and disturbances, and how these responses shape these interconnected carbon, water, and nutrient cycles. However, ecosystem responses to global change span both above- and below-ground and are investigated through diverse approaches, from observations and experiments to modelling. Tackling these together is critical for enhancing the predictive capacity for our shared planetary future.
This session focuses on two complementary connections: links between above- and belowground ecosystem processes, and links between experiments, observations, and models. We welcome studies addressing either or both, including research on carbon, water and nutrient processes, plant traits and physiological responses, ecosystem interactions, and scaling from individuals to ecosystems. Contributions are welcome across a range of scales and approaches, from greenhouse and mesocosm experiments to large-scale field manipulations, remote sensing, and machine learning and process-based modelling.
We particularly encourage contributions presenting novel methods, ideas and hypotheses, including those from early-career researchers, and aim to create a space where such ideas can be discussed openly.

Carbon allocation is central to plant functioning and ecosystem carbon cycling. Recently assimilated carbon can be partitioned among a range of above- and belowground sinks including growth, respiration, storage, reproduction, symbiotic interactions and rhizodeposition, including root exudation. Environmental conditions can alter these allocation patterns, with consequences for the fate and persistence of carbon above- and belowground. Despite the importance of carbon allocation, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms controlling the fate of newly fixed carbon, how allocation patterns vary across species and ecosystems, and how they respond to environmental drivers.
This session aims to address key questions such as:
1. What drives carbon allocation above- and below-ground?
2. How is recently assimilated carbon partitioned among sinks (e.g. growth, metabolism, storage, reproduction, symbioses and rhizodeposition)?
3. How do allocation patterns respond to global changes, involving a.o. warming, drought, elevated CO₂, or alterations in nutrient availability?
4. What trade-offs exist between aboveground and root growth, storage and exudation?
5. How does belowground carbon allocation support nutrient acquisition, water relations, stress tolerance and plant-microbe interactions?
6. How can carbon allocation, including root exudation, be quantified, traced and represented across spatial and temporal scales?
We invite observational, experimental, methodological and modelling studies that investigate plant carbon allocation from organ to ecosystem scales. We particularly welcome studies that explore carbon allocation dynamics, including trade-offs among growth, storage, defence and reproduction, as well as root functioning, symbiotic carbon transfer and rhizodeposition in a changing environment.
By bringing together research on plant physiology, root ecology, carbon tracing, rhizosphere processes and ecosystem modelling, this session seeks to advance an integrated understanding of how plants allocate carbon above- and below-ground, how these allocation strategies respond to global changes, and how they ultimately affect plant performance, ecosystem functioning and terrestrial carbon cycling.

Plant-soil interactions shape how ecosystems respond to climate change, yet many of the underlying processes remain difficult to observe across scales and are challenging to represent in models. This session brings experimentalists and modellers together to examine how evidence from the plant-soil continuum can improve predictions of carbon, water and nutrient cycling from plots to whole ecosystems. We welcome studies from forests, grasslands, wetlands and permafrost systems that combine experiments, observations and modelling, or use one approach to challenge and guide the other. Contributions may address shared mechanisms across ecosystems, the translation of measured processes into model structure and parameters, and the design of experiments that can distinguish between competing model assumptions. By connecting these perspectives, the session aims to identify key knowledge gaps and practical ways to improve predictions of ecosystem responses to climate change.

Mycorrhizal fungi are central to the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, playing a critical role in ecological processes such as nutrient cycling and carbon storage. Mycorrhizal fungi enhance nutrient uptake by plants, primary productivity, decomposition, and they contribute to organic matter accumulation. This session aims to bring together research investigating the diverse roles and functions of mycorrhizal fungi in forest, grassland, wetland, and other “natural” ecosystems, with a focus on ectomycorrhizal, arbuscular, and ericoid mycorrhizal associations. We will explore how mycorrhizal fungi drive ecosystem functioning in its broadest sense, and how these processes respond to environmental changes, from climate change to management. We welcome contributions from research conducted across all biomes and scales, ranging from the global to petri dish environment, encompassing observational, experimental, and modeling approaches. By fostering discussion and sharing cutting-edge research, this session aims to deepen our understanding of mycorrhizal fungi as mediators of ecosystem function, clarify their ecological importance, and highlight the need for continued exploration in this rapidly evolving field.

Studying the impact of environmental change on soil C cycling has a long and established history. Soils are heterogeneous, requiring a multidisciplinary approach integrating biogeochemistry, physics, microbial diversity, and other drivers. Although we can increasingly integrate multiple processes into soil C cycling models, challenges remain in determining the appropriate level of complexity or abstraction, calibrating parameters, and selecting ecologically relevant variables. Meanwhile, growing data from (long-term) experiments can support model design, calibration, and validation, alongside advances in hybrid modelling and machine learning.
However, integrating climatic and biotic interactions into biogeochemical process models for heterogeneous soils remains limited by methodological challenges. Long-term datasets are scarce, especially those designed to test model structures, parameterisation strategies, and process representations. Modelling studies may also fail to incorporate the latest experimental insights because model development and evaluation is time consuming or required data are unavailable. Conversely, experiments are not always designed with modelling applications in mind, limiting their use for model testing and generalisation across sites and scales. This session brings together experimental and modelling scientists to discuss advances and challenges in soil C cycling. We particularly welcome contributions demonstrating successful integration of experimental and modelling approaches, identifying critical knowledge gaps, and exploring pathways toward more robust predictions of soil carbon dynamics under global change.
We invite contributions linked to:
• Soil C and nutrient cycling and microbial diversity experiments, especially those designed to support model development and/or containing long time series.
• (Hybrid) modelling at various spatial scales, including data-model integration, mechanistic process representations, parameterisation and calibration, model evaluation, uncertainty analysis, and machine learning.
• Studies linking climatic and biological drivers of soil C cycling.
• Research integrating experiments and modelling, including data assimilation, model validation, long-term datasets, and identification of key processes controlling soil C dynamics under environmental change.
• Studies addressing transferability and scaling of soil C processes from laboratory and field experiments to ecosystem, landscape, and global scales

Environmental change is altering the soil–plant continuum, with consequences for ecosystem functioning, crop productivity, biogeochemical cycles, and land management. Drought, salinity, temperature extremes, nutrient imbalances, and soil degradation affect element mobility and bioavailability, root uptake, carbon assimilation, and plant performance. Understanding these interconnected responses requires approaches that link below- and above-ground processes across spatial and temporal scales.
This session will explore how isotope and trace-element geochemistry can be integrated with plant phenotyping to investigate the soil–rhizosphere–plant–atmosphere system under changing environmental conditions. We welcome contributions from natural and managed ecosystems, including forests, grasslands, croplands, orchards, vineyards, and marginal lands.
We particularly encourage studies integrating stable isotopes (e.g. δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N, δ²H, δ¹⁸O, and δ³⁴S), trace-element and isotope geochemistry, and plant phenotyping methods such as spectral and thermal imaging, chlorophyll fluorescence, and root-stem-leaf hydraulic system structural-functional characterization. These complementary approaches can help trace water and nutrient pathways, assess element bioavailability and soil-to-plant transfer, and identify physiological responses across species, cultivars, and genotypes. Contributions may range from controlled experiments to field and landscape-scale studies, including methodological advances and the integration of experimental data with modelling or remote sensing. By connecting geochemistry, soil biogeochemistry, plant ecophysiology, hydrology, phenotyping, and crop science, the session aims to translate fundamental knowledge of the soil–plant continuum into applications for ecosystem and crop resilience, climate-smart agriculture, and sustainable land management.

After carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are among the most potent greenhouse gases (GHGs), exacerbating global warming. Their rapidly rising concentrations in the atmosphere require urgent action. Forest ecosystems play an important role in the exchange of GHGs with the atmosphere; however, their global role is still far from being understood. It has been shown that not only soils but also trees can emit and/or consume CH4 and N2O in forests. Trees contribute to ecosystem exchanges in various ways. They can uptake and transport soil-produced CH4 and N2O to the atmosphere; produce and consume both gases in situ in tree tissues; and modify carbon and nitrogen turnover in adjacent soils. However, the individual processes involved beyond net ecosystem GHG exchange remain unclear and seem to depend on various factors, including tree characteristics, tree species traits, forest ecosystem type, environmental variables, and seasons. Moreover, there are also other, but still rarely studied co-players in the forest GHG exchange, such as ground vegetation, cryptogamic covers, or water bodies in case of forested wetlands. Interactions between soil, plants, and the atmosphere play a crucial role in controlling the global budget of these gases.

Our session will link scientists studying the CH4 and N2O cycles in forest ecosystems under different climatic, hydrological and scale conditions. This is crucial for improving our understanding of CH4 and N2O exchange in these ecosystems. We welcome contributions on production and consumption processes and mechanisms in soils and plant/tree tissues, as well as gas transport processes within the soil-tree-atmosphere continuum. We highly encourage gas flux measurements from forest soils, cryptogams, ground vegetation, water bodies (in forested wetlands), tree stems, leaves, and canopies using chamber systems or integrated ecosystem approaches (e.g., flux towers with eddy covariance, satellites, or modelling). We also encourage methodological studies investigating CH₄ and N₂O exchange in forest ecosystems.

Solicited author:
Dr. Josep Barba (CREAF, Spain)

Grassland systems are foundational to global food security, occupy roughly 40% of the terrestrial surface, and play a key role in climate regulation by storing around 20% of global soil carbon (C) stocks. These systems, however, sit at the intersection between opportunity and risk. On the one hand, improved management can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, enhance C sequestration, strengthen nutrient cycling and improve soil health. On the other hand, decades of intensification have contributed to widespread land and soil degradation, increased GHG emissions, soil C losses, and disrupted nutrient cycling, undermining ecosystem resilience. Practices such as adaptive grazing management, silvopastoral systems, and the integration of legumes or organic fertilisers could unlock substantial mitigation potential, including up to 150 Tg CO₂-eq annually in soils, while reducing dependence on synthetic N fertilisers. Yet, major knowledge gaps remain. We still have a limited understanding of the mechanisms governing GHG mitigation, soil C sequestration, nutrient cycling, and soil health across diverse systems and environmental conditions, constraining our ability to assess their potential for building resilient systems. Addressing these uncertainties is particularly important as grasslands face growing pressures from land-use conflicts, biodiversity decline, climate change, shifting protein demands, and socioeconomic transformations in rural areas.

Our session invites contributions that shed light on how grassland management, restoration, and grazing practices shape climate mitigation, soil processes, and ecosystem resilience across diverse environmental conditions. We particularly welcome studies that advance our understanding of the interactions among vegetation, soils, and livestock, and their implications for climate mitigation and sustainable food systems. Contributions from all regions and diverse perspectives are encouraged to foster a more holistic understanding of these challenges. The session will include, but not be restricted to, field and modelling studies, mesocosm experiments testing hypotheses related to C and N cycling in grasslands, and literature syntheses, with the aim of advancing knowledge and informing sustainable grassland management worldwide.

Savannas are open woody-herbaceous systems where low woody plant density permits substantial herbaceous productivity. Savanna ecosystems cover around 20 % of Earth’s land surface, supporting the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people, harboring unique biodiversity, and regulating regional to global carbon, water, and energy fluxes. Despite shared structural features, their geographical distribution spans multiple continents adding a wide range of climates, soils, biotas, and diverse management regimes - with fire and herbivory further regulating tree-grass coexistence. Both semi-arid and tropical savannas generally exhibit pronounced wet-dry seasonality and high intra- and interannual climate variability. Rapid changes such as rising temperatures, extreme droughts and heat events, shifting precipitation patterns, altered fire regimes, and land-use intensification are reshaping savanna structure and functions. These pressures can drive nonlinear dynamics, including woody encroachment, aridification of forests, biome boundary shifts, and changes in ecosystem services, raising urgent questions about resilience and tipping points.
This session brings together observational, experimental, and modeling studies that advance our understanding of savanna function, land-atmosphere feedbacks and biome resilience in a changing world. Topics include, but are not limited to:
· carbon, water, nutrient, and energy cycles and their variability across different scales
· disturbance regime shifts and interactions with vegetation structure and function, seed banks and soils
· detection and prediction of changes in tree-grass balance, woody encroachment and critical transitions
· integration of process-based and statistical models to represent savanna dynamics and feedback mechanisms
· biodiversity, ecosystem services, and social-ecological resilience, including integration of Indigenous and local knowledge in land management

Drylands cover 41% of Earth’s land surface, are home to over a third of the world’s population, store a third of global soil organic carbon and significantly contribute to the trend and interannual variability of the net land carbon sink. At the same time, drylands are vulnerable to climate and land-use change, and projected intensifying climate extremes, and disturbances pose potential threats to future ecosystem services and livelihoods. Yet, much about dryland ecosystem dynamics remains poorly understood, in part because of the importance of rapid-onset and highly localized events, emphasizing the need for improved understanding of dryland processes and their response to global change.
This session welcomes studies that advance our understanding of ecosystem dynamics in drylands, their role in carbon, water, and nutrient cycling, and the implications for ecosystem resilience under current and future global change. We specifically encourage submissions that (i) focus on interactions among dryland ecology, hydrology, and climatology; (ii) present the development or application of novel approaches to quantify and characterize carbon-water-ecosystem interactions across space and time; and (iii) address challenges such as temporal and spatial variability and heterogeneity, pulse-driven dynamics, and measurement and modeling needs specific to drylands.

Cold regions, including Arctic, boreal and alpine regions, are warming at a much faster rate than the global average, putting cold regions and their ecosystems under increasing pressure. These environments harbour well-adapted yet fragile ecosystems, including permafrost peatlands and Arctic tundra, which have acted as natural carbon sinks for millennia. This may change as warming induces snow cover loss, rain-on-snow events, increased wildfire frequency and intensity, widespread permafrost thaw and thermokarst formation, and other landscape disturbances that transform the biogeochemistry, hydrology, ecology, and morphology of the cold regions. Ultimately, these phenomena can trigger local and large-scale climate feedbacks through shifts in the exchange of carbon, water and energy to the atmosphere.
The goal of this session is to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion on the dynamics of cold region ecosystems under a rapidly changing climate. We aim to bring together varied perspectives from researchers working on biogeochemistry, including greenhouse gas flux measurements, microbiology and plant-soil processes. We welcome studies focusing on observational, experimental, remote sensing and modelling approaches to understand plant and microbial functioning, biogeochemical cycling, ecosystem disturbances, permafrost carbon loss, export to aquatic systems, and associated impacts. Because most prior research on cold region ecosystems has focused on the growing season, we particularly welcome contributions from the non-growing season. We further encourage contributions that aim at a quantification of permafrost feedback strengths, at the regional to global scale, and those that improve our understanding of mechanisms at the process-level.

Non-vascular photoautotrophs, including bryophytes, lichens, algae, and cyanobacteria, are widely distributed in all terrestrial habitats around the globe. They occur growing on and within rocks, epiphytically on plants, and growing on soil they often form so-called biological soil crusts. Despite their often small stature, these organisms (together with the microbiomes and cyanosphere they host) play a significant role in key ecological processes such as water, carbon, and nitrogen cycling, as well as the regulation of atmospheric and belowground processes. Yet, these critical organisms remain underrepresented in ecological research. Because non-vascular photoautotrophs are highly responsive to changes in environmental conditions, understanding and quantifying their functional roles is becoming increasingly important under rapid global change. Encouragingly, a growing body of data, such as functional traits, microbiome information, and greenhouse gas quantifications, is now emerging for non-vascular vegetation across diverse ecosystems, which has opened new avenues for linking to ecosystem functions in the context of climate change. However, significant challenges remain. These include limited quantitative understanding of how non-vascular photoautotrophs mediate interactions between the atmosphere, vegetation, soil, and associated microbial communities; mismatches in temporal and spatial scales of available observations and ecosystem-level processes; and difficulties in scaling physiological and community-level processes from local measurements to regional and global ecosystem functions.
To address these challenges, this session aims to bring together cutting-edge research that examines non-vascular photoautotrophs as crucial drivers of ecosystem functioning and to raise awareness of their inclusion in ecosystem function research frameworks within the field of ecology. We welcome all studies investigating the roles of bryophytes, lichens, cyanobacteria, algae, and their associated microorganisms, both individually and as communities in ecosystem processes, with particular interest in water, carbon, nitrogen, and other biogeochemical cycles. Contributions may make use of conceptual, observational (in-situ or remote sensing), experimental, and modelling approaches, and may cover a range of scales from organismal ecophysiology to community, ecosystem, regional, and global dynamics.

Peatlands store large amounts of carbon and water, regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and hydrological processes, and provide unique habitat for biodiversity while buffering landscapes against environmental change. Understanding their vulnerability and resilience is therefore critical for predicting climate feedbacks and guiding effective protection and restoration. This session welcomes observational, experimental, and modelling studies from all peatland. We invite contributions that investigate peatlands’ response to natural and anthropogenic stressors, and the impacts these disturbances create on ecosystem structure, biogeochemical processes including hydrological regimes, carbon dynamics and exchanges of greenhouse gases. Relevant topics include peat formation and decomposition; vegetation change; temperature and climatic induced changes; fire; land use, drainage, resource extraction; and ecosystem restoration. Studies highlighting field or laboratory experiments along environmental gradients, long-term observations, remote sensing, data synthesis, and theoretical or process-based modelling will be adequate for this session. Contributions that integrate observations and models, connect processes across spatial and temporal scales, compare peatland types or regions, or evaluate restoration outcomes are especially welcome.

Oxidation of peat organic carbon is a critical determinant of greenhouse gas emissions from peatland ecosystems. This session aims to bridge the gap between biogeochemical processes at the pore scale and their environmental impacts at the ecosystem scale. At the heart of peat carbon oxidation are microorganisms that act on molecular carbon substrates, driving biogeochemical reactions at a microscale. These microbial processes are fundamental, yet they operate on a scale that poses challenges for direct observation and measurement, and modeling. Our current methodologies provide valuable data on carbon turnover and peatland dynamics. However, there remains a significant challenge in inferring processes at the microscale and extrapolating or linking these drivers to the ecosystem scale. This linking is needed to be able to make estimations and future predictions of carbon emissions from peatlands and the consequences of a changing climate.
This scientific session will focus aims to integrate across the multiple scales of peat carbon oxidation. We will explore:
1. Microscale Processes: Understanding the role of biogeochemistry and microorganisms in peat decomposition and the processes that determine peat carbon oxidation potentials and rates
2. Intermediate-Scale Measurements: Applying techniques and methodologies to measure carbon turnover and emissions, the insights they provide in underlying processes, and techniques for upscaling
3. Challenges in Upscaling: Addressing the links between small-scale processes and ecosystem-scale emissions. This includes modeling approaches and integrative methods to connect scales.
Our goal is to foster a dialogue that integrates these different scales of study, ultimately enhancing our ability to predict and manage the effects of peat carbon oxidation on the global carbon cycle. By integration across scales, we aim to advance our understanding of peatland functioning and to develop more accurate models reflecting the true complexity of peatland ecosystems.
Join us in this session to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of peat oxidation and its far-reaching implications.

Tropical peatlands store around 105 Gt carbon (C), although their total extent remains uncertain due to inadequate data. In a natural condition, tropical peatlands are long-term C stores and support livelihoods, but anthropogenic disturbances are increasing in extent. These transformations result in high C loss, reduced C storage, increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, loss of hydrological integrity, peat subsidence, increased risk of fire, and negative social impacts. For agricultural peatlands, changes in nutrient storage and cycling necessitate fertilizer use, with enhanced emissions of N2O. Under a warming climate, these impacts are likely to intensify and reduce the benefits to rural communities. This session welcomes contributions on all aspects of tropical peatland science, including peatland mapping and monitoring; the impact of climate on past, present and future tropical peatland formation, accumulation and C dynamics; peatland ecology and hydrology; GHG and nutrient flux dynamics; management strategies for GHG emissions mitigation and the maintenance or restoration of C sequestration and storage; and valuing ancestral knowledge of peatlands. Field based, experimental and modelling studies of intact and modified systems from all tropical regions are welcomed.

Tropical forests are biomes of global significance due to their exceptional biodiversity, carbon storage capacity, and key role in the hydrological cycle. In recent decades, ecosystems across South America, Central America, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia have experienced increasing pressures from human activities, climate change, and intensified natural variability, including a growing frequency of extreme events such as droughts, heatwaves, and storms compounded by ENSO and increased fire occurrency. These drivers have altered the cycling of nutrients, carbon, water, and energy, while also affecting human livelihoods. Yet the ecological consequences of extremes are rarely limited to single, isolated events: repeated disturbances can compound over time, shifting forests from resilient recovery trajectories toward cumulative, and potentially irreversible, stress.

In this session, we aim to place a particular emphasis on how tropical forest ecosystems respond to both individual extreme events and their cumulative effects of multiple stressors over time. We invite contributions that examine the consequences of single versus repeated disturbances across multiple dimensions, including above- and belowground biomass, forest-atmosphere interactions, carbon budgets, biodiversity, and social livelihoods. We welcome studies using diverse approaches, ranging from experimental and field-based investigations to remote sensing and modeling. Our goal is to foster a holistic understanding of how the transition from single events to cumulative stress shapes both the current and future states of tropical vegetation and the communities that depend on it.

Extremes in temperature, vapor pressure deficit, and soil moisture severely endanger critical functions and services provided by terrestrial ecosystems. Both increasingly extreme long-term trends in environmental conditions and extreme events such as heatwaves, droughts, floods, and unseasonal freezes directly impact key physiological processes such as carbon uptake, transpiration, growth, and mortality. Abundances or scarcities of water, atmospheric dryness, heat, and cold can operate separately or in tandem to reduce terrestrial gross and net primary productivity and elevate risks of plant mortality. However, due to the complexity of these interactions and the lack of continuous time series, it is difficult to quantify the magnitude and timing of stress-related impacts on ecosystem function. As climate change accelerates the occurrence and severity of climatic extremes with consequences for terrestrial ecosystems, we must harmonize our efforts to characterize plant and ecosystem functions and develop frameworks for monitoring and prediction.

In this session, we broadly explore the roles of temperature extremes, evaporative demand, and soil moisture in carbon, water, and energy relations, along with plant mortality across various spatial and temporal scales. We encourage submissions dealing with novel approaches for measuring and modeling plant and soil water status, responses to extreme conditions, and their impacts on ecosystem function. We invite contributions on these topics at scales ranging from individual plant tissues to entire ecosystems, applying experimental, observational, or modeling approaches and dealing with diverse disciplines such as plant physiology, community ecology, ecosystem ecology, land management, and biogeochemistry.

Although climate change is a natural process, it is significantly stimulated by anthropogenic activities. The acceleration of climate change is directly connected with ecological stability, soil degradation, and hydrological extremes, which are considered as the main consequences of climate change. As climate change intensifies, extreme and unexpected weather events are becoming more frequent.
The aim of this session is to highlight a broad range of research methods and results related to climate change. This interdisciplinary session should reflect, discuss, and share scientific knowledge on a local and regional scale with the aim to increase innovative knowledge on climate change and its impacts, ecosystem response and new techniques to prevent and reduce the negative consequences.

This session encourages contributions from several fields related to:
- climate change impacts (biodiversity loss, rising temperatures, hydrological extremes, soil degradation, ecosystem response to climate change);
- droughts and floods; precipitation deficiency or extreme precipitation with solutions aimed at reducing the negative impacts;
- ecological stability and climate change; changes of ecological stability, deforestation, human interactions with the environment and evaluation of restoration success;
- green cities to increase the ecological stability of the urban landscape;
- techniques and methods to prevent and reduce the negative impacts of climate change (such as soil degradation, carbon sequestration, changes in natural, agricultural, and forest ecosystems, reduction of overall ecological stability and character of the landscape);
In addition, attention will be given to the sustainability of management practices, the importance of appropriate land use management as the main tool for preventing degradation processes, the distribution and vitality of ecosystems, and improving the condition of forest ecosystems in order to increase the overall character of the landscape.

Climate extremes are reshaping forest disturbance regimes worldwide. Hotter droughts, heatwaves and compound events are increasingly associated with growth decline, canopy dieback and pulses of tree mortality, reducing the carbon sink potential of forests, threatening biodiversity and impairing ecosystem services. Yet a central challenge remains unresolved: when does climate stress cross the threshold from reversible impairment to irreversible decline and death?
This session focuses on the early-warning signals, mechanisms and projections of tree mortality focusing on these irreversible shifts or transitions. We invite studies that connect hydraulic dysfunction, carbon and nutrient dynamics, wood formation, phenology and biotic stressors with growth, canopy condition and mortality data. We particularly welcome contributions that address:
• critical thresholds, drought legacies, compound extremes and early-warning signals preceding canopy dieback and tree death;
• hydraulic and carbon-related proxies and mechanisms of tree decline and mortality;
• resilience and recovery failure, including carryover effects or legacies across seasons and years;
• integration of tree rings, dendrometers, ecophysiological measurements, forest inventories, flux observations and remote sensing for monitoring forest health from trees to biomes;
• detection, mapping and forecasting of forest decline and mortality using Earth observation, machine learning, data-driven approaches and process-based models;
• vulnerability of large, old and senescent trees and old-growth forests, and the role of forest structure, composition and functional diversity in modulating climate risk;
• interactions among drought, heatwaves, fire, insects, pathogens and other natural or anthropogenic disturbances;
• harmonization of monitoring approaches and development of global datasets and networks for detecting changes in forest vitality and mortality;
• translation of vulnerability science into adaptive forest management, restoration strategies and decision-support tools.
By bringing together field ecologists, experimentalists, ecophysiologists, dendroecologists, forest and remote-sensing scientists, modelers and managers, the session will identify why some trees, stands and forests persist while others decline, which indicators provide robust and transferable warnings, and how those insights can support climate-resilient forest management.

Tree mortality has been a focus of ecological research in the recent past, supported by a wide range of approaches such as permanent plot inventories, remote sensing, and dynamic vegetation models. These approaches have substantially improved our understanding of where and when trees die off, and of how mortality varies across environmental gradients. Although our understanding of the processes leading to tree mortality has increased significantly in recent years, we are still far from having a complete picture that would enable us to predict patterns in natural forest ecosystems, particularly across spatial and temporal scales. The International Tree Mortality Network (ITMN) aims to bridge these complementary data sources to gain new insights in the processes leading to tree mortality, ranging from empirical observations to process-based approaches. This session invites contributions investigating tree mortality resulting from both biotic and abiotic pathways, including extreme climate events such as the 2026 European drought. Contributions focusing specifically on identifying the ultimate processes and mechanisms leading to tree mortality are particularly welcome:
* Bridging observations across spatial and temporal scales to identify pathways leading from environmental stress to tree mortality.
* Linking mortality patterns to underlying physiological and ecological mechanisms, including hydraulic failure, pests and pathogens, growth reductions, and their interactions.
* Using long-term observations (tree rings, plot inventories, satellite time series, …) to identify pre-mortality trajectories and legacy effects.
* Improving the representation of tree mortality mechanisms in vegetation models.

Plant hydraulics regulate water transport, photosynthesis and transpiration, thus controlling vegetation productivity, carbon uptake, and vulnerability to droughts and extreme heat. Key hydraulic traits such as conductivity and capacitance are fundamental to ecosystem resilience but remain challenging to monitor and model across scales. Vegetation water content (VWC) provides a critical integrative measure of hydraulic status and dynamics, offering actionable indicators for ecosystem monitoring, agricultural and forestry management, and early warning of stress. Nevertheless, hydraulic variables and VWC remain difficult to observe consistently across spatial and temporal scales: signals vary from leaf to landscape, and are confounded by soil moisture, vegetation structure, biomass and temperature, and exhibit strong diurnal/seasonal dynamics that challenge cross-sensor harmonization and validation.

This session welcomes methodological advances, applications, and validations. We emphasize developments in passive and active microwave (radiometry, radar) retrievals, GNSS-based approaches (transmissometry, reflectometry), and optical/thermal methods, alongside in situ measurements (e.g., leaf/stem water potential, dielectric probes, dendrometry) and model-data integration.


We invite contributions that: (i) improve retrieval algorithms, including cross-frequency synergies; (ii) fuse microwave/optical/LiDAR with in situ data to bridge scales; (iii) quantify uncertainties and disentangle confounding factors; (iv) integrate observations into ecohydrological and land-surface models via data assimilation, and advance model representation of plant hydraulics, improve the coupling between the water and carbon cycles, and make use of emerging observations; and (v) use hydraulic observations and products, including VWC and related metrics, to resilience and disturbance/recovery assessment, drought monitoring and early warning, phenology, and agricultural/forestry management.


Case studies, global syntheses, and contributions providing open datasets, intercomparisons and community benchmarks are encouraged. The session aims to foster discussion between attendees from various scientific communities and academic backgrounds approaching plant hydraulics from different perspectives.

With climate change, many terrestrial ecosystems are experiencing more frequent and intense (hot) droughts. Plant responses to drought reflect the combined effects of soil water limitation and vapour pressure deficit, often compounded by heat. Understanding changes in transpiration, photosynthesis, and recovery after drought requires quantifying water transport and water stress along the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum.
Advances in in-situ measurements and remote sensing provide unprecedented information on plant responses to drought and their drivers. Continuous measurements of plant and soil water status, sap flow, dendrometry, and ecosystem fluxes from eddy-covariance can now be combined with satellite observations of evapotranspiration, canopy temperature, solar-induced fluorescence, soil moisture, vegetation water content and optical depth, linking plant- and ecosystem-level processes.
This wealth of data presents a unique opportunity for mechanistic modellers to improve simulations of water transport across the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum. Models increasingly account for plant hydraulics, plant water storage, detailed root water uptake, and access to subsurface water. Data assimilation, inverse modelling and hybrid or physics-informed machine learning can integrate these new observations to improve our understanding of the processes that control plant responses.
Despite these new opportunities, transferring knowledge across disciplines and scales remains a major challenge. Further work is needed to determine how hydraulic limitations in the rhizosphere and root zone affect stomatal regulation and canopy fluxes, and which hydraulic traits explain responses from individual plants to communities. Other challenges include bridging the gap between field and satellite observations and adequately representing heterogeneity, acclimation, drought legacy effects and recovery in models, together with the combined effects of soil water limitation and atmospheric drought.
This session aims to connect the fields of ecophysiology, ecohydrology, soil science, climate science, remote sensing and modelling. We encourage interdisciplinary contributions based on field experiments, monitoring networks, Earth observation, model development, model-data integration and data assimilation across natural and managed ecosystems. We particularly welcome studies that connect measurements, processes or scales, and contributions led by students and early career researchers.

Land-atmosphere coupling modulates the exchange of water, heat and carbon between the land surface and the atmosphere. Therefore, it can dampen or exacerbate climate extremes (e.g., heat waves and droughts) and affect ecosystem processes (e.g., the land carbon sink). However, there are several key aspects related to uncertainties that hinder the accurate quantification of land-atmosphere coupling. Firstly, different metrics/indices can be used to describe (aspects of) land-atmosphere coupling, introducing uncertainties between the respective estimates. Secondly, an increasing amount of data describing land-atmosphere coupling is available, together with increasingly powerful methods for analysing them. In response to this, a more thorough consideration of uncertainty stemming from data and methods is critical in interpreting the robustness of emerging patterns. Lastly, physical processes underlying land-atmosphere coupling occur on different spatiotemporal scales ranging from in-situ to the regional scale and from seconds to months, which may or may not be reflected in the data we use to study them, in turn further inducing uncertainties.
Only by considering these aspects it is possible to determine accurately where available information is (not) sufficient to draw robust conclusions. Addressing the uncertainty challenge aims at a more precise identification of e.g. accurate observational constraints for process-based modelling or a more accurate determination of the role of land-atmosphere interactions for changes in (surface) weather and climate.
We invite abstracts that quantify uncertainties of various origins relevant for studying land-atmosphere interactions, including but not limited to inter- and intracomparisons of observations and model output, evaluations across spatiotemporal scales, and assessments of variables capturing surface carbon or water fluxes and indices/metrics.
We are especially interested in abstracts that move beyond solely quantifying the uncertainties, but motivate us to address and reconcile them and abstracts focusing on the implications of uncertainties related to land-atmosphere interactions on the evolution and location of extremes, carbon processes or the location of land-atmosphere coupling hot spots, among others.

Water is continuously redistributed laterally across terrestrial landscapes and scales, from hillslopes and catchments to regional and continental river networks, through surface and subsurface pathways that connect groundwater, riparian zones, wetlands, floodplains, and rivers. These lateral hydrological connections redistribute water, energy, carbon, and nutrients across space, linking terrestrial and aquatic processes and influencing where carbon and nutrients are taken up, stored, mobilized, transformed, transported, or released.

This session focuses on biogeochemical responses to lateral water redistribution and how they change across spatial and temporal scales. We welcome contributions on how laterally redistributed water alters ecosystem productivity, respiration, methane cycling, and soil carbon and nutrient dynamics; how hydrological flow paths mobilize, transport, and transform carbon and nutrients; and how these effects interact, accumulate, or change across connected landscape positions and scales. We also welcome studies examining how these relationships vary with hydroclimate and landscape structure, and how they respond to environmental change.

Contributions may span hillslope, catchment, river-network, regional, continental, and global scales. We welcome field observations, experiments, remote sensing, synthesis studies, and modeling approaches, including process-based, data-driven, and hybrid models. The session aims to connect perspectives from terrestrial biogeochemistry, ecohydrology, critical zone and groundwater hydrology, and watershed science to better understand how the biogeochemical consequences of lateral water redistribution emerge and change across scales.

Human activities on land (LULCC) shape climate by altering land-atmosphere fluxes of carbon, water, energy, and momentum. An increasing focus on land-based climate mitigation and adaptation strategies to meet more stringent targets has expanded the range of land management practices considered specifically for their potential to alter terrestrial carbon cycling or mediate favorable environmental conditions. This focus has also called attention to potential tradeoffs between climate-centric aspects of LULCC and its influences on biodiversity, hydrology and other environmental factors. Advancements in modeling and measurement techniques are opening new possibilities to better describe LULCC and its effects on the Earth system at multiple temporal and spatial scales. This session welcomes all contributions aimed at furthering our understanding of LULCC in the Earth system, including those addressing LULCC effects on carbon, climate, hydrology, and/or biodiversity, and aims to present studies that can inform adoption of appropriate land-based strategies for climate mitigation, adaptation, and ecosystem restoration.

Human societies have transformed terrestrial landscapes well before and throughout the Holocene through fire, cultivation, deforestation, and, more recently, large-scale industrial land-use, intensive agriculture, and forestry. Datasets that capture this trajectory of land use change represent essential boundary conditions for global climate and carbon cycle models. However, such datasets are difficult to create at high enough spatial and temporal scales, especially as we go further back in time. These legacy impacts of land use transitions is the reason why land use emissions continue to have the highest uncertainty in the global carbon budget at approximately 60%.
Over the recent decades, historical land use change datasets have evolved from coarse representation of a limited number of land use classes to complex frameworks that capture multiple land use transitions and land management practices. The integration of recent high-resolution earth observation data, LiDAR, historical archives with archeological and paleo-ecological evidence, historical maps, and dynamic vegetation modeling into long-term reconstruction workflows are enabling researchers to constrain historical LULCC at higher accuracies.
This session invites researchers working across the interface of paleo-environmental science, remote sensing, and Earth system modeling to showcase recent advances in historical and contemporary land-use reconstructions. The themes include, but are not limited to 1) long-term historical LULCC reconstructions using historical, archeological or paleo-environmental data, 2) earth observation driven approaches to quantify post-industrial LULCC, 3) harmonizing high resolution observations with millennial scale global land use forcing datasets.
We encourage interdisciplinary submissions from remote sensing scientists, ecological modelers, historical geographers, and paleoecologists to have discussions on building the next generation of LULCC datasets.

Managed agricultural ecosystems (grassland and cropland) are an important source and/or sink for greenhouse gases (GHG) as well as for reactive trace gases. Representative measurements and modelling under typical conditions as well as for potential mitigation options are necessary as a basis for recommendations to policy makers and farmers.
Due to the simultaneous influence of various environmental drivers and management activities (e.g. fertilizer application, harvest, grazing) the flux patterns are often complex and difficult to attribute to individual drivers. Moreover, management related mitigation options may often result in trade-offs between different GHG or between emission of GHG and reactive gases like NH3, NOx, or VOCs. To investigate these interactions, the session addresses experimentalists and modelers working on carbon and nitrogen cycling processes and related fluxes on plot, field, landscape, and regional scale. It is open to a wide range of studies including the development and application of new devices, methods, and model approaches as well as field observations and process studies. Particularly welcome are studies on multiple gases and on the full carbon, nitrogen or GHG budgets. We also encourage contributions about the applicability and overall potential of mitigation options.

Reactive nitrogen (N) is essential for agricultural productivity, yet its inefficient use contributes to emissions, N losses, and environmental impacts. Improving our understanding of reactive N turnover and fate is crucial for reducing uncertainties in N budgets and supporting sustainable nutrient management.
While the factors controlling N turnover are relatively well established under laboratory conditions, quantifying N transformations under field and landscape conditions remains a major challenge. High spatial and temporal variability, methodological limitations, and complex interactions among biological, chemical, and physical processes create substantial uncertainties in N turnover pathways and environmental controls.
Limited availability of in situ datasets hampers evaluation of mineralization, nitrification, and denitrification in process-based models, reducing confidence in predictions across scales. Addressing these challenges requires integrating experiments, field measurements, monitoring, and modelling across scales. Improved process understanding and quantification of N transformations are essential for predicting reactive N losses, assessing greenhouse gas emissions, and evaluating mitigation options.
This session welcomes contributions advancing understanding of reactive N turnover and fate in agricultural systems, focusing on linking measurements, monitoring, and modelling approaches across temporal and spatial scales.
Topics of interest include:
• Experimental studies investigating nitrogen transformation processes, turnover rates, and reactive N loss pathways under laboratory, field, or landscape conditions;
• Advances in field measurements and monitoring approaches for quantifying reactive N pools, fluxes, and turnover;
• Novel approaches to constrain N turnover, including 15N tracer techniques, isotopic methods, controlled incubation experiments, and other innovative methodologies;
• Process-based, data-driven, and hybrid modelling approaches for simulating N cycling and reactive N fate across scales;
• Studies evaluating management and mitigation strategies aimed at reducing reactive N losses and greenhouse gas emissions;
• Integration of measurements, monitoring, and modelling for improving N budgets, model evaluation, and uncertainty reduction;
• Linking N transformation processes with soil microbial communities, environmental drivers, and agricultural management practices.

Agricultural production is increasingly exposed to hydroclimatic extremes, including drought, extreme heat, heavy precipitation, flooding, frost, and water scarcity. Yet detecting a hydroclimatic extreme alone does not establish when and where crops will experience damaging stress, how severe that stress will become, or whether it will lead to substantial yield losses or crop failure.

The growing availability of Earth-observation, meteorological, reanalysis, and seasonal forecast data, together with advances in crop and hydrological modelling, statistics, and artificial intelligence, provides new opportunities to complement retrospective monitoring with crop-impact prediction and early warning. Realising this potential requires robust quantification of predictive uncertainty, rigorous evaluation of model performance during extreme events, and assessment of how well prediction systems generalise across years, crop types, environments, and regions.

Cross-regional comparisons can therefore help identify key controls on crop vulnerability and resilience while improving the transferability and interpretation of crop-risk prediction systems.

Another important challenge is predicting whether, and to what extent, crops can recover following hydroclimatic stress and how this recovery affects final yield.

We invite contributions addressing, but not limited to:

- crop responses to individual, sequential, and compound hydroclimatic extremes, including drought, extreme heat, frost, heavy precipitation, flooding, and water scarcity;
- early and in-season prediction of crop stress, yield anomalies, yield loss, and crop-failure risk;
- Earth-observation indicators for detecting and anticipating crop stress, including vegetation condition, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and canopy temperature;
- advances in data-driven, process-based, physics-informed, and hybrid prediction frameworks that draw on statistical modelling, AI, and crop, hydrological, and land-surface models;
- probabilistic prediction, uncertainty quantification, forecast calibration, and reliability;
- crop recovery following hydroclimatic stress and differentiation between recoverable and yield-damaging stress;
- identification of intervention windows and decision-relevant thresholds for agricultural early warning.

The session aims to advance robust and transferable approaches for predicting crop stress and yield risk and translating these predictions into actionable agricultural early warning.

Disturbances, such as extreme weather events, play a key role in shaping ecosystems. Under climate change, extreme weather hazards undergo changes in frequency, intensity and seasonality. While ecosystem-based adaptation and nature-based solutions are gaining traction, it is crucial to investigate the diverse interactions between extreme weather risk, ecosystems, and their services.

This session seeks to highlight research on the nexus of weather and climate related extreme events and ecosystems. We encourage submissions on: 1) investigations into the key attributes and patterns of extreme weather events which affect ecosystem composition, structure and functioning, 2) studies on how ecosystems respond to and recover from extreme weather events across past, present, and future climates, 3) Implications of extreme weather impacts on ecosystems for biodiversity and ecosystem service provision. We welcome a diverse array of contributions, including theoretical analyses, modelling approaches, field studies, experimental designs, and remote sensing analysis.

Key topics include:
- Identification of extreme weather risk hotspots, and subsequent ecosystem responses (terrestrial, coastal, or marine) in past, present and future climates

- Role of extreme weather in shaping ecosystem composition, biodiversity, structure and functioning, and its impact on ecosystems service provisions across temporal and spatial scales
Interactions of natural hazard, anthropogenic and biogenic disturbances with ecosystems (including compounding events)

- Ecosystem vulnerability, resilience and recovery dynamics under weather extremes, including regime shifts / tipping points in ecosystems
Impact and efficacy of nature-based solutions under extreme conditions, risk of maladaptation or disservices

Vegetation change in mountainous regions is often treated as an outcome of changing hydro-meteorological regimes, yet its feedback to those regimes remains poorly resolved. While it is known that vegetation has significant effects on water partitioning, and shifts in species distributions may actively alter the distribution and temporal availability of water in the regions, these latter dynamics remain poorly represented in the scientific discussion and existing Earth-System-Models. A consolidated understanding of the effects has been hampered by their apparent global heterogeneity: While the European Alps have experienced intensive greening rates, other systems like the North American Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada face widespread forest degradation and disturbance driven mortality with varying hydroclimatic impacts.
This session focuses on the underlying and resulting snow-water-vegetation interactions in seasonally and perennially snow-dominated mountain regions across the globe, where runoff generation heavily depends on the seasonality of snow and glacier melt and its interaction with vegetation, surface- and groundwater bodies. We invite contributions addressing the process interactions between snow and glacier melt, surface- and groundwater, evapotranspiration, primary production, soil moisture distribution and runoff generation, welcoming field work as well as modelling studies. We especially look forward to the integration of novel monitoring techniques into modelling frameworks, inviting case studies as well as comparative and scenario studies across space and time.
We want to connect scientists across disciplines to advance ecohydrological understanding of mountain systems and investigate the role of vegetation in these diverse and complex landscapes.

Droughts, characterized by precipitation deficits and high evaporative demand, are becoming increasingly frequent, prolonged, and intense under global environmental change. Climatic drivers (such as altered precipitation regimes and rising temperatures) and land surface modifications (including vegetation greening, deforestation, land-use transitions, and wildfires) interact in complex ways to shape ecohydrological responses to droughts across spatial and temporal scales.
This session invites contributions that explore how ecosystems and hydrological processes respond to droughts, aiming to uncover both underlying mechanisms and broader consequences. We welcome studies based on observational, modeling, and conceptual approaches. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
1. New insights into drought responses based on emerging in-situ and satellite observations of soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and vegetation dynamics.
2. Process-based understanding of ecohydrological responses to droughts of varying severity under changing climate and land surface conditions.
3. Long-term trends and resilience of ecohydrological systems under recurrent droughts, with a focus on resistance, recovery, and key environmental drivers.
4. Advances in modeling frameworks (process-based or AI-based) and observation-constrained approaches for improving the representation of drought responses.
5. Social and ecological impacts of evolving droughts, including implications for ecosystems, agriculture, water resources, and human well-being.
By integrating hydrology, ecology, and remote sensing, this session seeks to advance our understanding of ecohydrological drought responses and to inform sustainable adaptation strategies in a changing environment.

How do soil-plant-atmosphere interactions shape hydrological and vegetation responses to climate extremes? How do antecedent soil-water and vegetation conditions influence the pathways through which droughts, heatwaves and floods affect agricultural and natural systems? Which approaches can explain contrasting responses and improve predictions?
This session explores soil-plant-atmosphere processes and hydrological pathways during the onset and development of climate extremes and subsequent recovery. We examine links between meteorological forcing, antecedent system states, plant water use, land-atmosphere exchanges and hydrological responses, from field to catchment scales. We welcome studies of contrasting responses under dry and wet conditions, drought-heat interactions and transitions between extremes.
Topics of interest:
1. Soil-plant-atmosphere responses and feedbacks. Root water uptake, plant water regulation, evapotranspiration, canopy energy balance and vegetation stress during droughts, heatwaves and excess water, including soil-water supply and atmospheric demand interactions.
2. Antecedent conditions and hydrological pathways. How soil moisture, root-zone water storage, vegetation condition and groundwater connectivity shape responses to extremes; how water storage and partitioning among evapotranspiration, drainage, recharge and runoff link plant water availability to broader hydrological behaviour.
3. Contrasting extremes, event sequences and recovery. Contrasting responses under different initial conditions; drought-to-flood transitions; compound hot-dry conditions; and hydrological and vegetation recovery: timing, thresholds and legacy effects.
4. Observation-informed process understanding and prediction. Combining observations and models to identify response pathways, test process explanations, link spatial scales and assess predictive performance across events and environmental conditions.
We welcome research using satellite and uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) remote sensing, field experiments, process-based models, data assimilation and interpretable or hybrid machine learning, especially integrating soil-water, vegetation, surface-flux and hydrological observations.
Studies may examine single extremes or processes or compare events and systems. We link soil-plant-atmosphere and hydrological extremes research to explain how initial conditions and interacting processes shape responses and recovery.

This session invites contributions that advance the observation, understanding, and modelling of ecohydrological processes across spatial and temporal scales. We particularly welcome studies of vegetation–water interactions, including root water uptake, evaporation and transpiration, canopy interception, soil moisture–plant feedbacks, and ecosystem responses to climatic and environmental changes. Contributions combining experiments, in-situ observations, remote sensing, data-driven approaches, and process-based modelling are encouraged, with particular emphasis on identifying mechanisms, understanding their variability across scales, and improving the representation and prediction of ecohydrological processes.

A particular focus is placed on scaling, data-model integration, and transferability: how can observations and process understanding obtained at fine spatial and temporal scales be translated into reliable predictions across heterogeneous landscapes and under climatic, ecological, and land-use change? Contributions addressing model evaluation, uncertainty, parameterization, scaling, and transferability across contrasting environments are especially encouraged. We also welcome work that connects improved predictive capability to challenges in ecosystem, water resources, and land management.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: (1) ecohydrological mechanisms and feedbacks among hydrological, ecological, and biogeochemical processes; (2) multi-scale observation and modelling of ecohydrological processes; and (3) scaling, model evaluation, uncertainty, and transferability across heterogeneous landscapes and changing climatic, ecological, and land-use conditions.

The session aims to bring together approaches that advance fundamental process understanding and the predictive capability of ecohydrological models, fostering new perspectives on how ecohydrological knowledge can be translated across scales and environmental conditions.

Interactions between plants and their environment shape terrestrial fluxes, biochemical cycles, and agro-ecosystem productivity. However, we still lack detailed knowledge of how these interactions impact plant access to soil resources and, hence, plant growth, particularly under deficit conditions. The main challenge arises from the complexity inherent to biophysical and biochemical processes in soil and plants across multiple scales. To address these knowledge gaps, an improved understanding of soil-plant-related transfer processes is needed.

Quantitative approaches that integrate across disciplines and scales constitute stepping-stones to foster our understanding of fundamental biophysical processes at the interface between soil and plants. This session targets research investigating soil-plant-related resource transfer processes across different scales (from the rhizosphere to the global scale) and welcomes scientists from multiple disciplines encompassing soil and plant sciences across natural as well as agricultural systems. We are specifically inviting contributions on the following topics:

- Hot topics 2027: Heat and drought interactions, hybrid process-based and data-driven models
- Bridging the gap between biologically and physically oriented research in soil and plant sciences
- Measuring and modeling of soil-plant hydraulics and gas exchange, water, solute, and carbon fluxes through the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum across scales
- Identification of plant strategies to better access and use resources from the soil, including under abiotic stress(es)
- Experimental techniques such as non-invasive imaging and three-dimensional root system modeling tools
- Novel experimental and modeling techniques assessing belowground processes such as root growth, root water, and nutrient uptake, root exudation, microbial interactions, and soil aggregation
- Mechanistic understanding of plant water use and gas exchange regulation under drought and their implementation across scales (from cell to organ to single plant to agro- ecosystems, Earth system)

The continuum approach is a classical framework to describe and understand the soil--water dynamics and the soil effective--stress state in unsaturated soils. This approach is robustly rooted in the definition of the soil--water constitutive laws (soil--water retention curve, soil hydraulic conductivity, Kirchhoff potential, etc.). They link the real soil and its model. Advancements along their development and the comprehension of their role stand at the intersection of experimental measurements, mathematical representation and modelling, numerical solutions, theoretical understandings and practical applications.

This session aims at stimulating an interdisciplinary discussion about the state of the art and recent advances about soil--water constitutive laws and soil physical and hydrological properties, in the framework of a continuum approach and contributing to define its limits.

Experimental, theoretical and numerical contributions are encouraged about, but not limited to, (1) scaling of soil--water constitutive laws and their changes in time and space as a consequence of seasonality, climatic changes, anthropogenic changes and pedogenesis; (2) physics of water--repellent soils, and of swelling, dispersive and collapsible soils; (3) constitutive laws for extremely dry conditions and for nearly saturated soils; (4) nonequilibrium and hysteretic behaviours; (5) limits of the Darcian approach in the presence of macroporosity; (6) heat transfer and dispersion; (7) freezing and thawing processes in permafrost; (8) mechanisms of incipient erosion; (9) mathematical functions of constitutive laws and their physical implications; (10) pedotransfer functions and database analysis.

Advancements along those lines will have major implications in many fields, ranging from hydrology, to soil science and soil physics, agriculture and geotechnics.

Catchments are spatially heterogeneous because of topography, soils, vegetation covers, and climate. These features shape the redistribution of water, energy, carbon, and nutrients in the landscape, influence hydrological connectivity, and create biogeochemical hotspots. This session explores how the spatial organization of landscapes, soil, and vegetation cover shapes coupled water, energy, carbon, and nutrient processes in heterogenous landscapes. We welcome observational, experimental, process-based modelling, and AI/ML-driven studies that identify the mechanisms organizing the spatial patterns of ecohydrological processes and feedbacks. Relevant topics include simulated and observed spatial patterns of water, carbon, and water quality and underlying mechanisms; hydrological connectivity and lateral transfers; the emergence of biogeochemical hotspots; propagation of local dynamics to catchment-scale carbon, nutrient, sediment, and pollution export; and spatially heterogeneous responses to climate change. We also encourage cross-catchments studies that compare contrasting landscapes, explicitly consider spatial heterogeneity, and larger-scale study that develop approaches for representing sub-catchment and sub-grid heterogeneity at regional and continental scales. This session potentially brings together hydrologists, biogeochemists, and modelers that improved the process understanding and modelling ability of coupled water, energy and elements in spatially heterogeneous catchments.

Climate change-induced drought and extreme events are exerting increasing pressure on forest persistence and resilience. This pressure manifests across biological, spatial and temporal scales, from trees adjusting physiological processes and resource allocation under limiting water conditions to changes in interactions among individuals, species and their environment. These responses can translate into altered growth and functioning, increased mortality, and shifts in population dynamics and community structure.
A major challenge is to understand how processes and responses observed at one organizational scale relate to those emerging at others. This requires integrating complementary perspectives.
This session welcomes research connecting two or more scales of tree-to-forest responses, from biochemical and ecophysiological processes to, populations, communities and landscapes. We invite contributions using stable isotopes, tree rings, ecophysiological measurements, experiments, long-term forest observations, remote sensing, demographic approaches aimed at understanding the processes of forest resilience in a rapidly changing climate.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is the key water flux at the interface of soil, vegetation and atmosphere. Methods to derive this flux or its individual components from in-situ measurements have been developed in various research disciplines, covering different scales from e.g. point scale sap flow or soil heat pulse measurements, via pedon-scale of lysimeters, ecosystem scale of eddy covariance footprints to the landscape scale via drones or scintillometers. In-situ-measurements are necessary for calibration, validation and comparisons with larger scale estimates from remote sensing and modelling, but scaling procedures and uncertainty estimations are required for meaningful comparisons. Additionally, the support of these processes by AI methods holds much promise, but usually depends on large well-described data sets.

This session will mainly focus on the variety of in-situ ET estimates such as from sap flow or soil heat pulse sensors, lysimeters, eddy covariance stations, scintillometers and other (possibly new) methods. We would also like to address the challenges in comparing the different in-situ estimates while dealing with scale-dependency, uncertainty and representativity. We welcome contributions that (1) assess and compare established and new in-situ measurements, (2) address error sources and uncertainty considerations of the respective methods, (3) bridge scales between different in-situ measurements and modelled and remotely sensed ET, (4) demonstrate the value of in situ ET measurements to improve modelling of ET or characterizing large scale ET in combination with remote sensing; (5) evaluate challenges and opportunities of using AI for in-situ scaling and comparisons.

Phenological changes induced by ongoing climate change are affecting species, ecosystems, and even the global climate by altering species performance, species interactions (potential mismatches and new opportunities in the food web), and water and carbon cycles. Observations of plant and animal phenology as well as remote sensing and modeling studies document complex interactions and raise many open questions about the future sustainability of species and ecosystems. In this session we invite all contributions that address seasonality changes based on plant and animal phenological observations, pollen monitoring, historical documentary sources, or seasonality measurements using climate data, remote sensing, flux measurements, modeling studies or experiments. We also welcome contributions addressing cross-disciplinary perspectives and international collaborations and program-building initiatives including citizen science networks and data analyses from these networks.
This session is organized by a consortium representing the International Society of Biometeorology (Phenology Commission), the Pan-European Phenology Network - PEP725, the Swiss Academy of Science SCNAT, the TEMPO French Phenology Network and the USA National Phenology Network.

The terrestrial water cycle is usually studied one compartment at a time: precipitation by meteorologists, runoff and recharge by hydrologists, aquifers by hydrogeologists, and evapotranspiration by land-surface scientists. Yet climate change, land-use change and human water use act mainly on the links between these compartments. They change how rainfall is partitioned at the surface, how much reaches aquifers and how long it is stored there, and how much returns to the atmosphere to fall again as rain.

This session invites studies that cross at least one of these boundaries. Relevant topics include precipitation extremes, monsoons and atmospheric rivers and their imprint on runoff and recharge; soil moisture, infiltration, and snow and glacier melt; groundwater recharge, surface water–groundwater exchange, and storage change from GRACE and in-situ networks; evapotranspiration, moisture recycling and irrigation feedbacks; and the carbon, solutes and pollutants that water carries along its flow paths, including greenhouse-gas emissions from reservoirs. We also welcome interventions that deliberately reconnect the loop, such as managed aquifer recharge and nature-based solutions. Methods that link compartments are equally welcome: isotopes and tracers, remote sensing, coupled and hybrid models, and explainable machine learning.

We particularly encourage work on water-balance closure across scales, studies from data-scarce and monsoon-dominated regions, and research that turns whole-cycle understanding into water-security decisions. Early-career scientists are strongly encouraged to submit.

Agricultural production depends on climatic conditions such as precipitation and temperature, as well as their interactions with each other and with non-climatic factors. Disentangling these effects and understanding which climatic conditions affect agriculture, how strongly, and how future production could change under global warming is crucial for safeguarding future food production, supporting timely climate adaptation through management practices, and improving impact models and assessments. We invite submissions across a broad spectrum of approaches for assessment of climate change impacts on agriculture. Submissions may include, but are not limited to, the following themes:
1- Assessment of climatic conditions, including extremes (droughts, heatwaves) and averages, and their effect on agricultural production, variability and anomalies.
2- Assessment of adaptation practices, including but not limited to crop diversification, irrigation, and fertilization in crop production.
3- Projections of future agricultural production using multi-model climate simulations as well as single-model initial conditions and assessment of time of emergence.
4- Spatial and temporal variability and the role of teleconnections in climate risks to agriculture.
5- Supply chains, financial losses, and the role of insurance in alleviating financial losses in the agriculture sector.
6- Methodological advancements and intercomparison of process-based, statistical, and AI-based models for agricultural production and climate impact assessments.

Blue carbon ecosystems, including mostly salt marshes, mangroves, seagrasses, tidal forests and mudflats, rank among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth. They provide nature-based solutions essential to mitigate residual anthropogenic carbon emissions, while also delivering co-benefits such as biodiversity support or coastal protection. However, their resilience and capacity to sustain these functions are increasingly threatened by climate change and human pressures. To safeguard their role, it is essential to better understand their carbon cycle—particularly the feedback loops between soil and plants, the exchanges of carbon among the atmosphere, soil, and water, but also how human activities, vegetation, and carbon processes interact.
This session seeks to bring together scientists from multiple disciplines, including biogeochemists, ecologists, geographers, geologists, social scientists, biologists, alongside environmental managers.
By bridging perspectives across the natural and social sciences, the session aims to showcase pioneering research that i) advances understanding processes related to biomass and carbon in blue carbon ecosystems under current and future environmental conditions; and ii) spotlights effective management, conservation, and restoration practices to sustain or enhance carbon sequestration and broader ecosystem services, coupling the ecological functioning with social needs. Through this integration, the session will contribute to the goals of the United Nations Decade for Ocean Sciences, with co-convenorship from the Decade Programme for Blue Carbon in the Global Ocean.

Our capacity to estimate regional and global budgets of greenhouse gases (GHG, including CO2, CH4 and N2O) from aquatic ecosystems has significantly improved during the past decade, thanks to the substantial increase in field measurements. However, global estimates of these fluxes remain highly uncertain. Moreover, compared with terrestrial ecosystems, the field of aquatic GHG research is still young and the mechanisms behind the spatiotemporal patterns and variability of GHG concentrations and fluxes in aquatic ecosystems are not sufficiently understood, constraining model development. Therefore, to improve our estimates and understanding of regional and global GHG budgets from aquatic ecosystems, this session welcomes contributions on e.g.:
1) Field observations of GHG dynamics and fluxes in aquatic ecosystems, both freshwater and marine systems.
2) Experiments investigating physicochemical or biological processes or factors relevance to GHG production, consumption, transport, emission, or uptake.
3) Model development or simulation efforts to estimate GHG dynamics and fluxes across different spatial and temporal scales along the aquatic continuum.
Contributions providing additional perspectives of relevance for aquatic GHG cycling and fluxes are also of interest.

Methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are major, long-lived greenhouse gases (GHG), which foster global warming and significantly impact atmospheric chemistry dynamics. As a vast component of the Earth System, the aquatic realm is key for the balance between sources and sinks of these gases and largely determines their contribution to the global radiative balance. Hence, understanding the mechanisms of production, consumption, and emissions of these aquatic GHG is crucial for improving predictions of their future changes with ongoing climate change.

While the overall distribution of CH4 and N2O across the water column and sediments in marine, estuarine, and lacustrine systems is well documented, understanding of GHG cycling and emissions in the aquatic realm remains a major scientific challenge. This is largely due to the complex interactions between geological, oceanographic/limnological, biological, and anthropogenic processes. Furthermore, although it is well established that CH4 and N2O emissions offset natural CO2 uptake by aquatic systems, the magnitude of this counteracting effect, as well as their temporal and spatial variability, is still highly uncertain.

This session invites contributions addressing recent advances in understanding the biogeochemical cycling, microbial pathways, and fluxes of CH4 and N2O in aquatic environments. We welcome studies based on laboratory and mesocosm experiments, field observations, remote sensing and modelling approaches. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• CH4 and N2O cycling in estuaries, bays, fjords, coastal lagoons and other transitional water bodies across all latitudes, as well as fluxes across the sediment-water(ice)-air interfaces.

• The role of current and projected environmental perturbations such as eutrophication, deoxygenation and warming as drivers of CH4 and N2O cycling at the land-ocean continuum (e.g. through riverine input and submarine groundwater discharge).

• The impact of extreme events (e.g. heat waves, storms, floods) on CH4 and N2O cycling and emissions.

• CH4 and N2O formation, transport, and consumption, including specific microbial processes involved.

• Microbe-mineral and microbe-animal interactions (including symbioses) and how these affect CH4 and N2O turnover.

• Quantification of the contribution of CH4 and N2O emissions to overall radiative balance of aquatic systems.

Our ability to understand biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus and other elements in aquatic ecosystems has evolved enormously thanks to advancements in in situ sensor and laboratory techniques and predictive models. The aim of this session is to demonstrate how this methodological advancement improves our understanding of coupled hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological processes in freshwater aquatic environments, streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands and estuaries, controlling the fate of organic matter, nutrients, sediments and other chemical substances. In particular, our session focuses on improving the characterization of the origins, delivery pathways, transformations and environmental fate of organic matter, nutrients and sediments in aquatic environments along with identification of robust numerical tools for advanced processing and modelling of biogeochemical data. As hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological processes undergo accelerated change, this session welcomes also studies presenting approaches and tools to monitor, model, and predict water quality and sensitivity of aquatic ecosystems to global change and human disturbances.

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a key component of biogeochemical cycles in the ocean and on land. It contains as much carbon as all living biomass on the continents and oceans combined. DOM accumulates in the ocean over several millennia and acts as a substantial carbon storage pool. On the other hand, microbes rely on dissolved molecules for carbon uptake, processing DOM on short time scales. DOM is therefore the main link between organic and inorganic carbon in marine and freshwater ecosystems. A multitude of biogenic and abiotic processes shape the so-called “DOM geometabolome” which parallels sedimentary records as an information-rich set of molecular tracers. These compounds carry the signatures of their source and subsequent journey through the environment. For our session, we invite contributions from all areas of research on DOM biogeochemistry, from empirical to modelling studies, from groundwaters and lakes across the freshwater-to-marine continuum. Molecular-level and interdisciplinary studies including modeling approaches are particularly welcome. Also, contributions that apply innovative analytical approaches, or identify novel concepts, fundamental challenges and the future directions of this fast-growing field of research are encouraged.

Marine sediments are an important sink of organic carbon and source of alkalinity, providing a valuable climate regulating function (“Blue Carbon”). Human activities that disturb the seabed might, however, compromise the effectiveness of the seabed in storing organic carbon through a net increase of organic carbon remineralisation, or reduction of its alkalinity-generation capacity by stimulating re-oxidation of reduced minerals. For example, intense mobile bottom fishing may lead to reductions of organic carbon and pyrite stocks, especially in muddy sediments. Other human activities that disturb marine sediment include marine construction, dredging and dumping, offshore wind infrastructure, and submarine cables and pipelines. Sediment disturbance impacts on coastal carbon cycling are largely site or region-specific and difficult to generalise due to the many mechanisms that support stock creation and responses to disturbance, often in opposing directions. In addition, the fate of the ‘lost’ organic carbon or oxidized minerals, and consequences for the marine environment and global climate are currently not well understood. The roles of benthic fauna and of the water column biological carbon pump in carbon cycling under disturbance are also unclear.

Until recently, field and modelling studies have focussed on processes in or near the seabed. It is, however, becoming increasingly clear that a holistic approach is necessary to assess the impacts. Only then will it be possible to provide robust advice for marine spatial management and policy.

We therefore invite abstracts that cover any aspects relating to understanding and quantifying the climate impacts of human activities disturbing the seabed that may be relevant for carbon cycling. These may be observational, experimental, predictive or frameworks to support management. Key topics of this session include, but are not limited to:
- Carbon stocks, accumulation rates, reactivity, and provenance
- The role of flora and fauna in mediating remineralisation, accumulation and burial of carbon, and how disturbance may alter these functions.
- Disturbance impacts on water column nutrients, ecosystem processes, inorganic carbon chemistry and alkalinity dynamics
- Management of carbon stocks under uncertain disturbance outcomes

Organic carbon (OC) plays a fundamental role in the Earth’s climate system and biogeochemical cycles. Understanding the sources, transport, transformation, and fate of OC, as well as exchanges between dissolved and particulate phases, is critical for constraining regional and global carbon budgets, assessing carbon sequestration, and predicting ecosystem responses to natural and anthropogenic environmental change.

The land–ocean continuum, which encompasses rivers and coastal waters to continental margins and the deep ocean, provides important pathways for carbon transfer, transformation, and storage across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. During transport, biological, chemical, and physical processes, such as mineral-organic interactions and hydrodynamic transport, could profoundly alter the composition, reactivity, and age of OC, thereby influencing its preservation, redistribution, and ultimate burial. As a result, identifying carbon sources, quantifying carbon fluxes, assessing carbon burial efficiency, and constraining long-term carbon sequestration remain major challenges in understanding land-to-ocean carbon cycle research.

This session aims to bring together researchers investigating OC transport and cycling across the land–ocean continuum, from terrestrial and freshwater sources to coastal and marine sinks. We welcome observational, experimental, paleoenvironmental, and modelling studies addressing carbon sources, fluxes, transport pathways, transformation processes, preservation, burial, and sequestration in both particulate and dissolved forms. Contributions spanning the water column to the sedimentary record, including water sample, suspended particulate matter, sediment-trap observations, aquatic sediments, and sediment cores, are particularly encouraged. Remote sensing, autonomous observations, and numerical modelling approaches, either as standalone tools or integrated with field and laboratory studies, are likewise encouraged. We also welcome studies exploring the impacts of human activities and climate variability on carbon cycling across both modern and past environments.

Marine calcifiers play a fundamental role in ocean ecosystems and the global carbon cycle by producing and exporting calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). Pelagic calcifiers, chiefly coccolithophores, foraminifers and pteropods account for a major fraction of pelagic CaCO₃ production, but benthic calcifiers such as foraminifers and coralline red algae are also important ecologically and are used as proxy archives. Understanding their future under climate change requires connecting processes operating at the level of biomineralization with organismal physiology, ecology, biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem change.
This session will bring together experimental, field-based, geochemical, modelling and palaeoceanographic approaches to investigate how environmental change affects marine calcification and the fate of calcifiers. We particularly invite contributions addressing the mechanisms underlying biomineralization, including ion transport, carbonate chemistry, elemental and isotopic fractionation, and the controls on calcification and dissolution. We also welcome studies examining how physiological responses translate into changes in growth, reproduction, species distributions, community structure and ecosystem functioning and how these responses shape the vulnerability and resilience of marine calcifiers to ocean change.
A central goal is to bridge traditionally separated perspectives: controlled laboratory experiments that identify the mechanisms governing calcification; observations and experiments across natural environmental gradients that reveal organismal responses in situ; and biogeochemical and Earth-system models that translate these processes into consequences for the marine carbonate cycle.
We encourage contributions from research on all major pelagic and benthic calcifiers as well as comparative studies across taxa, life stages and environments. Studies using modern observations, experiments, sedimentary archives, geochemical proxies and modelling are particularly welcome. By bringing these approaches together, the session aims to advance a mechanistic understanding of how marine calcification responds to environmental change and how these responses may propagate from individual organisms to ecosystems and the global carbon cycle.

Hydrological extremes, water abstraction and reservoir operations are driving many lakes and reservoirs through low water, fragmented, dry and reflooded states. These transitions alter more than surface area and storage: they change residence time and connectivity, expose sediments to oxidation and desiccation, and reorganize exchanges among catchments, sediments, water and the atmosphere. Their sequence and duration can therefore generate thresholds, delayed recovery and persistent legacies in water quality and ecosystem function.
During contraction, solutes and contaminants may concentrate while littoral and bottom sediments become exposed. Drying changes redox conditions, microbial activity and organic matter processing. Reflooding can remobilize nutrients, salts, metals, suspended sediment and organic contaminants, trigger oxygen demand and greenhouse gas pulses, and reshape habitats and food web interactions. In managed reservoirs, the timing and rate of drawdown and refilling may amplify or reduce these effects.
The session will bring together hydrology, limnology, aquatic biogeochemistry, water quality, ecology, Earth observation and reservoir management. We invite field and experimental studies, in situ observations, water and sediment analyses, remote sensing, process based and data driven modelling, and regional or global assessments. Relevant topics include detection and attribution of state transitions; thresholds, hysteresis and recovery; sediment exposure and rewetting; carbon, nutrient and contaminant dynamics; ecological resistance and resilience; and monitoring, restoration and adaptive reservoir operation. By treating contraction, drying and reflooding as a connected trajectory, the session will examine when responses are reversible, when legacies persist, and how observations and management can reduce risks to water quality and ecosystem function.

Lakes are sentinels of climate change and human pressure, yet harmful algal blooms, loss of aquatic vegetation and water-quality deterioration are intensifying worldwide. Recent progress in satellite and UAV remote sensing, high-frequency sensor networks and artificial intelligence opens new opportunities for "smart" lake monitoring and operational early warning. This session invites contributions on: (1) retrieval algorithms for water-quality parameters (chlorophyll-a, cyanobacteria, turbidity, CDOM) and aquatic vegetation from multi-source remote sensing; (2) integration of in-situ, optical and physiological measurements for calibration and validation; (3) long-term (multi-decadal) reconstruction of lake ecosystem change; (4) data-driven and hybrid models (e.g. deep learning, KAN) for short-term forecasting of bloom events; and (5) cloud platforms (e.g. Google Earth Engine), open tools and management applications. We particularly welcome comparative studies across lakes and regions, as well as contributions from early-career scientists.

Integrating hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological perspectives is essential to understand spatial and temporal dynamics of biogeochemical processes and ecosystem functioning in freshwater, and their emergent responses and sensitivity to a rapidly changing climate. Hydrological processes shape terrestrial-aquatic connectivity within catchments, with cascading effects on aquatic ecosystems through the mobilization and transport of chemical elements and organic compounds, as well as the dispersal of organisms. On the other hand, biota influences hydrological processes through mechanisms such as tree transpiration and ecosystem engineering, while regulating the biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nutrients, metals, and pollutants.

This session aims to advance understanding of these multifaceted processes by integrating perspectives at the terrestrial-aquatic-atmospheric interface. We welcome contributions that integrate hydrology, biogeochemistry, and ecology across different organizational and spatial scales, from organisms and communities to stream reaches, lakes, river networks, and catchments. Relevant topics include carbon and nutrient cycling and associated fluxes in soils and inland waters, ecohydrological dynamics, riverine metacommunities, food webs, greenhouse gas exchange, and ecosystem responses to anthropogenic and environmental pressures, including land-use and climate change.

We particularly encourage submissions that develop or combine innovative methods, including remote sensing, machine learning, mathematical modeling, and novel laboratory or field approaches, to address current spatial and temporal data limitations. We also welcome studies that apply concepts, tools, or methods from one discipline to generate new insights in another. By bringing together scientists from diverse backgrounds, this session seeks to foster interdisciplinary dialogue, promote methodological exchange, and stimulate new collaborations in hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological research.

Stable isotopes are powerful tools for tracing water fluxes and associated nutrients in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. Because subsurface water and nutrient fluxes, plant water uptake, and atmospheric processes are tightly interconnected, advances in field methods, laboratory techniques, and modeling are critical for capturing these dynamics and their drivers with greater temporal and spatial resolution, precision, and accuracy. At the same time, ecohydrological models are expanding our ability to integrate these observations and assess fluxes in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. This session welcomes experimental and modeling contributions that apply isotope tracers to advance process-based understanding of water and nutrient fluxes across the subsurface, vegetation, and atmosphere, spanning scales from individual plants and forest stands to catchments. In our session, we aim to discuss i) innovative process-based interpretations of stable isotope data; ii) bridge ecophysiological and hydrological perspectives through field-based approaches; iii) development of novel modeling applications and frameworks or data analysis techniques; and iv) current methodological developments. We aim to foster interdisciplinary exchange among researchers investigating ecohydrological processes with natural tracers, spanning groundwater and vadose zone hydrology, plant physiology, and ecology. By linking subsurface hydrology with ecophysiological process studies, the session will showcase cutting-edge methodological advances and stimulate discussion to deepen our understanding of water and nutrient dynamics across the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum.

Our understanding of water pollution sources and their ecological impact has significantly advanced in the last decades. Major advancements have been possible thanks to automated water quality sensing techniques, novel separation techniques such as field-flow-fractionation, inferring ecological function from stream metabolism metrics and eDNA, and developments in modelling tools driven e.g. by the increasing access to high-resolution DEM data and satellite imaging. Further advancements are likely to emerge from the fusion of these datasets and techniques. This session will bring together examples of application of these novel tools for improving scientific understanding of dynamic freshwater ecosystems and their catchments, specifically for detecting water quality and stream ecology change over time and in response to natural and anthropogenic drivers such as global change. We also welcome contributions presenting examples of knowledge transfer to freshwater monitoring and management and freshwater-oriented collaborations between scientists, stakeholders, citizens, and authorities.

This session focuses on recent developments and research on ocean data assimilation. Data assimilation is essential for ocean forecasting, reanalysis, and climate studies. By optimally combining numerical simulations with various observations, data assimilation provides a dynamically consistent and comprehensive estimate of the present and past ocean state. This session invites abstract submissions on developments of data assimilation for the physical ocean together with coupled components such as sea ice, marine ecosystems, land-sea interface and atmosphere for ensuring consistency with other parts of the Earth system. The session also focuses on impact of the assimilation and deployment of novel space-borne and in-situ observations such as autonomous platforms, wide-swath satellite tracks, and deep in-situ observations and biogeochemistry profilers.
Beyond state estimation, this session also welcomes contributions in parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification, and hybrid machine learning and data assimilation methods focused on the ocean.

Global coastal zones are of high ecological and societal values. As the dynamic interface between land, sea, and air, they are heavily impacted by a combination of climate-driven environmental change and human interventions. Approaches to sustainably manage the coastal zone increasingly seek to provide co-benefits of risk mitigation, climate regulation, preserving biodiversity, and supporting coastal community resilience. These require scientific evidence and discourse that integrate across disciplines.
This session invites multi- and inter-disciplinary contributions focusing on coastal processes, their dynamic interactions, and their role in exchanges across coastal interfaces (e.g. land-sea, air-sea, river-sea, …) under a changing climate and changing human activities. We welcome observational, modelling and theoretical studies reporting on processes linked to coastal hydrodynamics, coastal biogeochemistry, coastal ecology, or coastal sediment dynamics and geomorphology. Studies may span the wide range of spatial and temporal scales characteristic of existing and projected change in coastal seascapes and landscapes from the inner shelf shoreward to reefs, seagrass meadows, beaches and dunes, estuaries, intertidal flats, mangrove forests, saltmarshes and coastal wetlands. We encourage the submission of holistic Earth system studies that explore the role of the coastal zone in coastal sea dynamics including exchanges across coastal interfaces under the impact of climate change and human activities. We also encourage studies that focus on impacts of coastal management or coastal adaptation approaches on coastal processes and dynamics, spanning engineered, hybrid, and nature-based options related to dynamic anthropogenic activities such as coastal protection, tourism, shipping, fisheries and aquaculture, and the expansion of renewable energies and other coastal infrastructure.

The oceans are changing rapidly in response to climate change. In this period of rapid change, long-term trends are now emerging across ocean variables, while natural variability operates across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, placing long-term observations at fixed locations in a unique position to be compared with models and reanalyses to investigate this variability and assess how well they represent changes in the ocean across timescales.

In this session, we invite contributions that bring together long-term ocean time series and numerical models and/or reanalyses and satellite data to examine the representation of ocean variability, from daily and seasonal cycles to subseasonal and interannual variability, and longer-term changes and trends. We encourage studies that go beyond model–observation validation and use the comparison to identify processes and timescales that are not adequately represented and investigate the physical causes of observed differences. Such approaches can improve the representation of ocean variability and the processes driving it in models and reanalyses and contribute to better estimates of long-term trends and their uncertainties, improved understanding of ocean–climate interactions, and enhanced skill in seasonal-to-decadal predictions.

Contributions are welcome at global, basin-wide and regional scales, and across ocean compartments, from the air–sea interface to the deep ocean and seafloor. Studies addressing ocean circulation and transports, biogeochemical or biological variables are encouraged. Contributions using CMIP models, ocean reanalyses, high-resolution regional models, process models, or other modelling and statistical approaches are all welcome. We particularly welcome contributions demonstrating the scientific value of sustained, high-frequency and long-term observations for improving models and reanalyses and advancing our understanding of a changing ocean.

This session aims to bring together multidisciplinary perspectives on the interplay between microbial activity, sedimentary processes, and geochemical signatures in lacustrine and marine environments, both modern and ancient. We seek contributions that explore how microbial metabolisms influence mineral formation (e.g., carbonates, clays, sulphates) how isotopic and molecular biosignatures record biogeochemical processes, and how sedimentary archives can be interpreted to reconstruct past environmental and climatic conditions.

We particularly encourage submissions that combine natural systems with experimental analogues, including laboratory simulations of mineral precipitation, microbe–mineral interactions, and environmental gradients. Studies integrating field observations, experimental data, and cutting-edge analytical or computational approaches (e.g., spectroscopy, synchrotron techniques, geochemistry, stable isotopes, machine learning) are especially welcome.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Microbially mediated mineral precipitation in lacustrine and marine systems
• Early diagenesis and biosignature formation: field, lab, and model approaches
• Stable isotope systems as proxies for microbial and environmental processes
• Experimental analogues simulating early Earth, Mars-like, or extreme environments
• Sedimentary and geochemical archives for paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental reconstructions
• Integration of microbial ecology, mineralogy, and geochemistry to assess biogeochemical feedbacks
• Applications to the search for early life and biosignatures in the geological record and planetary contexts

The ocean’s Biological Carbon Pump (BCP) plays a pivotal role in the oceanic carbon cycle by transporting organic carbon from the surface to the deep ocean, thereby regulating atmospheric CO₂ levels and long-term climate. A critical, yet poorly constrained component of the BCP is the velocity at which marine snow particles sink in the ocean. Various observations, imaging, laboratory experiments, and modeling have revealed significant variability in marine snow sinking velocities, influenced by factors such as particle composition, size, density, ballast minerals, but also hydrodynamic conditions such as vertical currents. The oceanic vertical currents are extremely difficult to assess since very variable and up to several orders of magnitude smaller than their horizontal counterparts. Nonetheless vertical velocities about 1 mm/s (~100 m/day) can have strong influences on sinking velocities.
This session invites contributions, , based on models or observations, exploring the physical, chemical and biological controls on marine snow sinking velocities as well as their biogeochemical feedback and parameterization. We welcome studies assessing sinking velocities using novel methodologies and biogeochemical models investigating the role of particle composition on sinking rates, examining the impact of environmental drivers (e.g., temperature, currents, internal tides, turbulence) on particle sinking rates and studies integrating observational, experimental, and modeling approaches to improve parameterizations of sinking velocities in global biogeochemical models.
By bringing together interdisciplinary research, this session aims to advance our understanding of the BCP’s efficiency and its representation in Earth system models, ultimately contributing to more accurate projections of ocean long term carbon sequestration.

Tropical reef ecosystems are facing a potential turning-point as they are experiencing the most extreme conditions on record. While the 4th global coral bleaching event (2023–25) exposed ~84% of the world's reefs to bleaching-level heat stress, the next extreme El Niño has started. Yet the observational baseline against which these events are assessed spans only a few decades, whereas the processes that determine whether certain reefs will persist can span centuries to millennia. To assess whether corals can adapt or have adapted to these extremes and which reefs will survive, we require baseline data that go far beyond current timespans alongside improved projections of the coming decades to centuries. Such information also provides an important foundation for restoration and conservation planning–a growing need. This session aims to bring together coral palaeoclimatology, reef (palaeo)ecology and (palaeo)biology, observations, and modelling relevant to restoration and conservation planning, policy-making, and understanding tropical climate dynamics.

We invite contributions from tropical and subtropical settings, including marginal, turbid and naturally extreme reefs, across timescales from deep time to future projections. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• high-resolution coral reconstructions and observations of ocean and climate variability (ENSO, IOD); oceanographic/ecological monitoring, remote sensing; skeletal growth/calcification, other marine biogenic archives (molluscs, sclerosponges, coralline algae)

• proxy development, process understanding; novel geochemical proxies (nitrogen, boron, clumped isotopes), biomineralisation

• coral reef ecology, biology, physiology under stress; thermal tolerance, trophic ecology, microbial symbiont dynamics, connectivity, community change, adaptation, reef refugia

• databases, synthesis, FAIR workflows; PAGES CoralHydro2k and CoralHydro2k-Seawater, CoralCache, GBR Coral Skeletal Records; proxy system modelling, isotope-enabled simulations, data assimilation, proxy-model comparison

• future projections of tropical climate and reef environments constrained by palaeorecords and observations; translation into baselines, thresholds, conservation planning

Contributions from coordinated programmes, such as PAGES working groups (e.g., 2k Network), DFG Priority Programme "Tropical Climate Variability & Coral Reefs", IODP research (e.g., IODP Exp. 389 Hawaiian Drowned Reefs), among others, are welcome.

Water may be present in soil, groundwater or surface storage yet remain inaccessible because it is hydraulically disconnected, too saline, too tightly retained, or stored on timescales mismatched with biological or human demand. We define water accessibility as the capacity of stored water to enter ecologically or societally relevant fluxes, with that capacity varying with hydrological state, connectivity, salinity, biological demand and human intervention.
This session asks when, where, for whom and for how long stored water becomes accessible in human-modified critical zones. We welcome studies of mobile and less-mobile domains, preferential flow, soil hydraulic structure, root access, groundwater depth, salinity, wetting-drying transitions, irrigation, drainage, pumping, land-use change, restoration, hydrological memory, water age and transit times.
Contributions may use field or laboratory experiments, stable isotopes and other tracers, geophysics, remote sensing, water-age and transit-time analyses, and a broad range of modelling approaches. We encourage studies addressing accessibility and functional outcomes for transpiration, recharge, runoff, ecological resilience, crop production, water security and other major ecohydrological or societal fluxes.
We particularly encourage work from agricultural systems, wetlands, deltas, drylands, forests, restored landscapes and other human-modified critical zones. Comparative and negative-result studies are welcome, including cases where connectivity or tracer contrasts strengthen, collapse or shift with hydrological state. The aim is to identify measurable indicators, thresholds, trade-offs and management timing while avoiding the assumption that more stored water necessarily means more accessible water.

Session Description

The Anthropocene is characterized by unprecedented human pressures on aquatic environments, with rapid urbanization, industrialization, intensive agriculture, mining, and climate change increasingly affecting the quality and availability of water resources. Emerging and persistent contaminants—including pharmaceuticals, pesticides, heavy metals, nutrients, microplastics, pathogens, and other chemical pollutants—pose complex challenges to freshwater and coastal ecosystems and may create significant risks to human and environmental health. Understanding the sources, transport, transformation, fate, and impacts of these contaminants is therefore essential for safeguarding water security and ecosystem integrity.

This session, “Safeguarding Water Quality in the Anthropocene: Contaminants, Health and Sustainable Management,” will bring together interdisciplinary research addressing contemporary and emerging challenges in water quality. Contributions are invited on contaminant monitoring and assessment, advanced analytical and sensing technologies, pollutant fate and transport, exposure pathways, ecological and human health impacts, risk assessment, and innovative approaches for water and wastewater treatment. The session will also explore nature-based solutions, circular approaches, remediation strategies, and data-driven and integrated frameworks for sustainable water-quality management.

By connecting environmental science, hydrology, engineering, public health, ecology, and policy, the session aims to foster knowledge exchange and identify science-based pathways for protecting water resources and supporting resilient, healthy, and sustainable aquatic systems in the Anthropocene.

Coastal wetlands, such as salt marshes, mangroves, seagrass beds, and tidal flats provide numerous ecosystem services, including coastal protection, biodiversity provision and climate change mitigation. However, coastal wetlands are under pressure from both natural and anthropogenic drivers of coastal change, and shifting climatic boundary conditions, hence are declining in area and habitat quality globally. At the same time, these environments are increasingly in the focus of restoration and nature-based solutions for coastal adaptation, where the aim is to work with, rather than against, the natural processes to build and maintain wetlands. Understanding how sedimentation, vegetation establishment, and self-organisation sustain these systems is therefore essential to designing interventions that remain functional over decadal timescales. This is the case for pristine, natural, managed, and restored systems alike.
This session will bring together studies of coastal wetlands across different climates and geomorphological settings to enhance the understanding of ecosystem service provisioning, interactions between hydrodynamics, sediment, and ecology, and to identify best future management practices and effective nature-based solutions. Studies of all processes occurring within coastal wetlands are invited. This includes, but is not limited to, hydro- and morphodynamics, bio-morphodynamics, bio-geochemistry, ecological change and evolution, and impacts and management implications of climate change, sea level rise, and anthropogenic pressures. We equally invite social science and interdisciplinary contributions, including stakeholder participation and co-design in wetland restoration, governance and institutional arrangements, public perception and acceptance of coastal nature-based solutions, and the distribution of costs, benefits and ecosystem services among coastal communities. This session aims to enhance our understanding of basic processes governing coastal wetland dynamics and to propose sustainable management solutions for contemporary environmental pressures.

The ocean is a major sink of anthropogenic carbon and heat, and dissolved oxygen has declined across all ocean basins, with consequences for marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycling. Oxygen, carbon, and heat are coupled through shared pathways of ventilation, circulation, and biological processes. Their regional-scale relationships, however, remain poorly constrained, because internal variability and redistribution can reinforce, mask, or decouple changes at regional scales. A multi-tracer perspective is therefore key to interpreting ongoing changes and projecting future changes in regional biogeochemistry and marine ecosystems. Here we propose a session that brings together the physical oceanography, biogeochemistry, and climate communities to examine how ocean physics and climate variability shape the coupled cycling of oxygen, carbon, and heat across paleo, present-day, and future climates, drawing on theory, observations, modeling, and data-driven approaches.

We seek contributions that investigate variability, trends, and coupling among oxygen, carbon, and heat from regional to global scales. Topics can include ocean carbon uptake and storage, ocean heat uptake and redistribution, deoxygenation, and the ecological and biogeochemical consequences of these changes. Contributions using historical reconstructions and uncertainty assessments, models, model–observation synthesis, proxy records, technological developments, oceanic and atmospheric integral constraints, and data-driven approaches are particularly encouraged, as are approaches that foster cross-cutting exchanges across the physical–biogeochemical disciplines. We also welcome contributions to deepen our mechanistic understanding in driving the changes, including the roles of ventilation, circulation, mixing, air–sea exchange, and biological processes; the use of oxygen, carbon, heat, and related tracers to diagnose these processes; and the influence of climate variability, such as ENSO and Pacific decadal variability, on their regional co-variability. This session connects to ongoing international efforts, including the CLIVAR-O2CH Research Focus and the Gridded Observational Dataset Intercomparison Project (GODIP), and aims to provide a forum for advancing an integrated understanding of physical–biogeochemical coupling in a changing ocean.

Our understanding of the Indian Ocean’s physical, biogeochemical, and ecological characteristics and their variability across a range of spatiotemporal scales has advanced in recent years. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge in observing, modeling, and predicting the Indian Ocean’s changing environmental conditions and its role in regional and global climate.
This session invites Indian Ocean contributions based on observations, modelling, theory, and palaeo proxy evidence across a range of timescales from synoptic, interannual, decadal to centennial and beyond. Topics of interest include past, current, and projected changes in Indian Ocean physical and biogeochemical properties and their impacts on ecological processes, diversity in Indian Ocean modes of variability, interactions and exchanges between the Indian Ocean and other ocean basins via both oceanic and atmospheric pathways, as well as impacts on regional hydroclimate and the adjacent Asia-Australia-Africa monsoon systems.
Submissions are sought on assessing and predicting weather and climate extremes of societal relevance in the Indian Ocean and surrounding regions. We especially welcome submissions addressing compound extreme events that span across the ocean, atmosphere, land, and/or biogeochemical and ecological realms. Furthermore, studies evaluating climate risks, vulnerability, resilience, adaptation and mitigation strategies in coastal and watershed regions affected, for example, by a warming climate, tropical cyclones, and extremes in sea level are encouraged.
We also welcome contributions that address research on the Indian Ocean, using advanced techniques such as artificial intelligence/machine learning, and new technological advances in observing systems.

Freshwater systems, societies and ecosystems are often studied separately, yet they are deeply intertwined parts of complex social-ecological systems. Advancing a holistic understanding of these systems is essential to addressing many grand challenges of the Anthropocene, such as ensuring water security, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

This session invites a broad range of submissions that study the dynamics of freshwater social-ecological systems. These may include socio-hydrological, ecohydrological, social-ecological, or other approaches that share an interest in investigating the properties of complex adaptive systems (eg., thresholds, resilience, emergent behaviour, path dependence, cross-scale effects).

We invite empirical, model-based, and theoretical contributions, which may include, but are not limited to:
- Network analysis, agent-based modelling, and system dynamics studies that represent feedbacks between hydrological processes and human behaviour such as decision-making and governance
- Machine learning and remote sensing applications to detect system change, map risks, and anticipate regime shifts
- Analysis or modelling of tipping points and cross-scale teleconnections (for example, virtual water trade) in human-freshwater systems
- Research on how ethics, power, justice, and values shape, and are shaped by, interactions between infrastructure, policy, and biophysical systems, including transdisciplinary work co-produced with water users, communities, and decision-makers

This session's overarching aim is to bring together diverse communities (hydrologists, ecologists, data scientists, social scientists, and sustainability scientists) into an interdisciplinary dialogue about the complex interactions between freshwater, society, and ecosystems. We especially welcome contributions showing how understanding these interactions can inform freshwater management to advance broader social and sustainability goals.

Fire has emerged as a dominant driver of change in tropical forests. In Amazonia, understory fire and degradation now affect an area comparable to the area deforested. Severe and frequent droughts, combined with widespread degradation, have caused areas with little recent history of fire to burn. There remains large uncertainty in how much carbon is lost to degradation, the time for degraded forests to recover structure, diversity, and carbon, and the role of fire in changing soil carbon fractions, including charcoal.

Soil radiocarbon analyses and new approaches to estimate pyrogenic carbon provide baseline data spanning centuries to millennia to assess modern fire regimes. Burn experiments, burn chronosequences, and plot networks assessing long-term change provide key ground-based data. Satellite data and modelling enable regional assessment and scaling. Combining these approaches and data can help to address knowledge gaps and large uncertainties in tropical carbon budgets. This session spans field, laboratory, remote sensing and modelling research on fire regimes, pyrogenic carbon, degradation and carbon in tropical forests. We invite contributions on:

--Reconstruction of fire history from soil charcoal radiocarbon, stable isotopes, and phytoliths and what it reveals about Holocene/pre-Columbian baselines for fires burning today;
--Pyrogenic carbon production, drivers, stocks, and turnover, and its role in soil fertility and carbon balance;
--Secondary and burned forest structure, tree composition, carbon stocks/fluxes, and their recovery following degradation;
--Controls on where and how tropical forests burn, including fire severity and intensity, flammability, and microclimate, and early-warning and forecasting;
--Approaches including Earth observation, forest and soil carbon models, soil respiration, scaling plot data to regional scales and assessing uncertainty.

Interdisciplinary contributions, work spanning tropical regions, and studies linking data over past and contemporary disturbance are especially welcome. Presentations by early career scientists and researchers based in tropical countries are encouraged.

Alarming trends in global wildfire activity, and the associated risks to biospheric health, emphasise the importance of accurate baseline trends in pyroecology – exploring critical relationships between climate, vegetation, and fire through time. These trends have so far examined the role of anthropogenic activity in influencing wildfire behaviour, and how we may mitigate this hazard under progressive climate change. Evidence of wildfire in the past is found across a vast array of depositional environments - including peat, coal, consolidated and unconsolidated sediments (e.g., lacustrine), ice, speleothem, etc. – and in many forms, as both solid (e.g., charcoal) and gaseous (e.g., PAHs, soot, BPCAs) fractions of pyrogenic carbon. Applying wildfire-replicative experimentation, advanced spectroscopic techniques, and machine learning, recent developments in wildfire reconstruction have considered the true role of fire thermochemistry in driving the creation, alteration, and preservation of this evidence. This innovative research has challenged the historic identification of fire activity solely through qualitative means. Instead, new methods offer quantitative measures of past wildfire intensity, severity, fuel composition, and area burned that are consistent with modern principles in fire science. Supported by multi-proxy reconstructions of climate, hydrology, vegetation, and early anthropogenic behaviour, the study of past wildfire activity has entered a new phase of exploration. This session explores cutting-edge developments in wildfire reconstruction across a variety of methods, timescales, and environments. We seek to bring together voices from modern wildfire ecology, fire engineering, geochemistry, and palaeoecology to discuss how we may better integrate and inform our research going forward. We invite contributions that i) introduce novel techniques in past wildfire reconstruction, ii) evaluate and develop upon existing reconstruction methods, including but not limited to FT-IR, Raman spectroscopy, charcoal reflectance, charcoal concentration and morphometry, PAHs, BPCAs, charred phytoliths etc., or iii) explore and evaluate fire reconstruction in novel case studies (no specific environment, method or age remit). We strongly encourage contributions that integrate observations of modern wildfire or wildfire-replicative experimentation with new or existing methods in reconstruction, or where the implications for palaeoecology are expressly considered.

Biodiversity dynamics occur across a wide range of time scales, from nearly-instantaneous processes to emergence and disappearance of higher-order taxa occurring over millions of years. Processes operating on up to decadal time scales can be directly observed, but our knowledge of longer-term processes and rare events such as extinctions is largely derived from the geological record. Despite the importance of such dynamics in understanding the response of biodiversity to anthropogenic change, explicitly linking observational and geological time scales remains challenging. The difficulty results from differences in sampling resolution and limitations in our ability to resolve rates at conservation-relevant time scales. The potential of the fossil record to attribute observed changes as well as to inform conservation planning is therefore often underutilised.

In this session we aim to identify and explore the key challenges in and solutions for bridging observational and geological time scales in biodiversity research. We welcome interdisciplinary empirical, conceptual, and modelling-based contributions from across taxonomic groups, environmental realms, and temporal scales and periods. Successful case studies showcasing how fossil data have been used to address conservation issues are particularly welcome.

Foraminifera and other eukaryotic microfossils play a crucial role in understanding the biology, ecology, and evolution of marine and freshwater ecosystems across geological timescales. These organisms serve as key indicators for reconstructing past environments, deciphering ecosystem dynamics, and assessing the impacts of global change on aquatic systems. This session focuses on the biology, ecology and actuopalaeontology of foraminifera and other microeukaryotes, exploring their functional roles in ecosystems, their responses to environmental changes, and their potential as proxies for past, present, and future aquatic conditions.

We welcome contributions that employ laboratory and field experiments, field studies, genetics/genomics (including eDNA/metabarcoding), imaging and biomineralization studies, isotopic and trace element geochemistry, and quantitative data science, including statistical inference, machine learning, big data synthesis, and modelling.

On one hand, our goal is to develop robust, quantifiable proxies, transparently assess uncertainties, and strengthen the bridge from modern processes to the fossil record. On the other hand, in doing so, microfossils could provide decision relevant baselines for ecosystem function, in addition to informing conservation strategies and future scenarios in changing aquatic environments.

Skeletal remains, like shells, ossicles, corals, bones, or fish otoliths, are valuable archives of physical, chemical, or paleogenetic information, helping us understand ecological and environmental changes over periods ranging from decades to millennia, whether on land or in the ocean. This session invites researchers who employ these archives to reconstruct changes in species and ecosystems in relation to climate variability and/or human impacts across both the deep time and the recent past. We encourage contributions that focus on biotic interactions, species and community dynamics, sclerochronology, isotope geochemistry, trait-based analyses, morphometric approaches, and ancient DNA/sedimentary DNA, in particular conservation-oriented case studies that combine data from modern biota and fossil remains. Complementary paleoecological archives—such as biogeochemical and isotopic signatures from sedimentary succession or archaeological middens—are also welcome, primarily when they document histories of environmental disturbance and its ecological consequences. We also welcome paleobiogeographic reconstructions that explore range shifts, corridor/barrier dynamics, and distributional disequilibria to inform how species’ spatial patterns have responded to past environmental change. In conclusion, by examining long-term records, we can gain insights into the potential consequences of present-day environmental stressors and climate change, reconstruct past dynamics of species and ecosystem changes, including extinction, recovery, and biogeographic shifts, and thus obtain valuable insights that can help us sketch the near-future trajectories of contemporary ecosystems.

Micropaleontological data provide unique insights into the dynamics and tipping points of past environments and climates through changes in the fossil record, including assemblage composition, morphology, and evolutionary patterns. Micropaleontology lies at the heart of biostratigraphy and provides a fundamental tool for reconstructing and stratigraphically constraining past changes in the Earth system. Our session aims to bring together a broad spectrum of micropaleontologists to showcase recent advances in the application of micropaleontological data to paleoenvironmental, paleoclimatological, and stratigraphic research in both marine and terrestrial settings.
We invite contributions from the field of micropaleontology that focus on the development and application of microfossils (including, but not limited to, coccolithophores, diatoms, dinoflagellates, foraminifera, ostracods, radiolarians, conodonts, and pollen) as proxies for paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatological reconstructions and tools for stratigraphic correlation. We particularly encourage submissions of multi-proxy approaches that merge micropaleontological, geochemical, and paleobiological information. The application of microfossils as stratigraphic markers and the advancement of multivariate statistical techniques with a focus on microfossil assemblages are encouraged.

Accurate reconstructions of sea surface, bottom water, and continental surface temperatures during the Cenozoic era are essential for understanding climate dynamics in the geological past, particularly under warmer-than-present conditions. However, producing robust and precise paleotemperature estimates remains inherently challenging. Temperature proxies are subject to a range of geochemical, biological, environmental, and analytical uncertainties, which lead to discrepancies in both absolute and relative temperature estimates across different methods. These limitations hinder efforts to synthesize globally representative paleotemperature records and to constrain the rates and magnitudes of global temperature changes in response to both abrupt and long-term changes in atmospheric CO2.

Addressing these challenges requires new approaches, including improved proxy calibrations, and more comprehensive inter-proxy and proxy-model comparisons, to obtain a better understanding of the uncertainties associated with paleotemperature reconstructions. In this session, we welcome contributions that push the boundaries of Cenozoic paleotemperature research, including new multi-proxy and multi-site temperature reconstructions, new advances in proxy ground-truthing, applications, and calibrations, and novel modelling perspectives on paleotemperature changes. By bringing together the diverse community using proxy and modelling techniques, we seek to increase the robustness of Cenozoic ocean and terrestrial temperature reconstructions. Ultimately, this will improve our understanding of Earth’s climate system and its behaviour during warmer-than-present states.

Speleothems are key terrestrial archives of regional to global palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental changes on sub-seasonal to orbital timescales. They provide high temporally resolved records which can be accurately and precisely dated using U–Th or U–Pb techniques in combination with a variety of proxies such as stable O and C isotopes and trace element ratios. Recent efforts have seen the rise in more non-traditional proxies, such as fluid inclusion water isotopes, organic biomarkers, pollen, dead carbon fraction etc. This advancement towards quantitative reconstructions of past precipitation, temperature, or other environmental variables and climate patterns are key for data-model comparisons and further evaluations. Beyond this, caves and karst areas additionally host an enormous suite of valuable proxy archives such as cave ice, cryogenic carbonates, clastic sediments, tufa, or travertine sequences, which complement the terrestrial palaeorecord, and are often associated with important fossils, historical or archaeological findings.

This session aims to integrate recent developments in the field and invites abstract submissions from a broad range of cave- and karst-related studies from orbital to sub-seasonal timescales.
In particular, we welcome contributions from:
(1) (quantitative) reconstructions of past climatic and environmental variables to explore precipitation, vegetation, fire frequency, and temperature changes across different climate zones;
(2) field- and lab-based developments of process-based methods to improve the application of cave and karst-related proxy variables;
(3) developments in chronological methods and their applications;
(4) process and proxy-system model studies as well as integrated research on developing and using databases such as SISAL (Speleothem Isotope Synthesis and AnaLysis).

We further welcome advancements in related and/or interdisciplinary areas, which pave the way towards robust (quantitative) interpretations of proxy time series, improve the understanding of proxy-relevant processes, or enable regional-to-global and seasonal-to-orbital scale analyses of the relationships between proxies and environmental parameters. In addition, research contributing to current international co-ordinated activities, such as the PAGES working group on Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis (SISAL) and others are welcome.

Tree rings are one of nature’s most versatile archives, providing insight into past environmental conditions at annual and intra-annual resolution and from local to global scales. Besides being valued proxies for historical climate, tree rings are also important indicators of plant physiological responses to changing environments and of long-term ecological processes. In this broad context we welcome contributions using one or more of the following approaches to either study the impact of environmental change on the growth and physiology of trees and forest ecosystems, or to assess and reconstruct past environmental change: (i) dendrochronological methods including studies based on tree-ring width, MXD or Blue Intensity, (ii) stable isotopes in tree rings and related plant compounds, (iii) dendrochemistry, (iv) quantitative wood anatomy, (v) ecophysiological data analyses, and (vi) mechanistic modeling, all across temporal and spatial scales.

Northeast Greenland occupies an important position within the Arctic, linking the Greenland Ice Sheet and ice-free terrestrial landscapes with the Arctic Ocean and Greenland Sea. Geologically and environmentally, the region has undergone major change associated with the opening and deepening of Fram Strait, the onset and intensification of Arctic–Atlantic water exchange, the early formation of ephemeral glaciers, the later build-up of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and its repeated expansion and retreat throughout the Quaternary. Ice-core records from EGRIP provide insights into past climate and ice-sheet dynamics, while observations of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream and its outlet glaciers reveal ongoing changes in one of the ice sheet's major drainage systems. Under ongoing anthropogenically forced warming, Northeast Greenland is particularly sensitive to Arctic amplification, resulting in rapid changes across its terrestrial, cryospheric, marine and atmospheric systems. Understanding these changes, their interactions and their future trajectories requires integration across disciplines and timescales.
We invite contributions from marine, cryospheric, terrestrial and atmospheric research focused on Northeast Greenland, extending from eastern North Greenland to northern East Greenland. Studies that improve our understanding of the region across geological timescales through the present and into the future, using geological and palaeoenvironmental archives, ice-core records, contemporary observations, process studies, remote sensing and numerical modelling, are all invited. We particularly encourage studies that explore connections among systems, including the dynamics and evolution of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, ice-sheet–ocean interactions, atmospheric and oceanic forcing, freshwater and sediment fluxes, ocean circulation and sea ice, long-term landscape evolution and its interactions with glaciation, permafrost dynamics, and terrestrial and marine ecosystem change.

Biogeodynamics, the study of the co-evolution of geo- and biosphere over geological time, brings together a diverse group of scientists, interested in how life and and planetary processes have co-evolved from the Precambrian to the present-day. This session highlights the interplay between biological evolution and tectonic, magmatic, and surface processes, exploring how changes in paleoenvironments and -geography have influenced the evolution of complex life - including animals, plants, and marine ecosystems - and how, in turn, biological processes reshape the solid Earth system. As a link between the two spheres, we seek to explore how greenhouse-icehouse climatic transitions have influenced biodiversity and ecosystems and how fossil records are linked to Earth system processes. As paleogeography exerts a fundamental control on Earth’s climate and the evolution of life, we welcome contributions that reconstruct paleogeography and explore its impacts, from the reconstruction of ancient supercontinents to the controls of ocean gateways on climate and biotic dispersals.
Biogeodynamics as an inherently multi-disciplinary subject aspires to better understand the complex coupling of biogeochemical cycles and life, the links between mass extinction and their causal geological events, how fossil records shed light on ecosystem drivers over deep time, and how tectono-geomorphic processes impact biodiversity patterns at global or local scales. We further encourage submissions that use new approaches to unravel the interplay between geodynamics, paleogeography, paleoclimate, and biological evolution across Earth’s history. We aim to understand our planet and its biosphere and climate through both observation- and modelling-based studies.

Marine sedimentary archives provide crucial information about past climate conditions and biogeochemical processes in the polar oceans. These records help constrain the range and underlying mechanisms of natural environmental variability and provide an essential long-term context for understanding ongoing changes at high latitudes. This session invites contributions focused on reconstructing Quaternary polar environments from marine sediment archives, as well as methodological developments that expand and refine the proxy toolbox available for studying these records. We welcome a broad range of approaches, including, but not limited to, sedimentology, micropaleontology, organic and inorganic geochemistry, isotope geochemistry, and sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA).

Minerals are formed in great diversity under Earth surface conditions, as skeletons, microbialites, speleothems, or authigenic cements, and they preserve a wealth of geochemical, biological, mineralogical, and isotopic information, providing valuable archives of past environmental conditions. Interpretion of these archives requires fundamental understanding of fluid-rock interaction processes, but also insights from the geological record.

In this session we welcome oral and poster presentations from a wide range of research of topics, including process-oriented studies in modern systems, the ancient rock record, experiments, computer simulations, and high-resolution microscopy and spectroscopy techniques. We intend to reach a wide community of researchers sharing the common goal of improving our understanding of the fundamental processes underlying mineral formation, which is essential to read our Earth’s geological archive.

High-resolution, non-destructive imaging techniques—including 3D micro-CT, micro-XRF core scanning, hyperspectral imagery, and multi-sensor optical logging—have revolutionized paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental research across sedimentary, speleothem, ice core, tree-ring, and biological archives. However, community-wide data synthesis remains hindered by non-standardized calibration protocols, disparate operating procedures, and unaligned data formats.

Organized in conjunction with the PAGES PaleoIMAGING Working Group, this session brings together empirical researchers, laboratory specialists, and data managers to showcase innovative scientific applications, proxy reconstructions, and community-wide harmonization.

We invite contributions covering:
1. Applied paleo-environmental, paleoclimate, and sedimentological studies using high-resolution core imaging modalities.
2. Novel imaging applications, sensor developments, and analytical processing methods.
3. Interlaboratory comparisons, standard reference materials, and physical calibration protocols.
4. Best practices, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and image processing/segmentation pipelines.
5. Open-access repositories, standardised data formats, and multi-modal dataset integration.

This session invites contributions that advance a comprehensive understanding and quantification of climate shifts across multiple timescales, from local to global scales. Submissions may highlight new (multi-)proxy reconstructions from diverse archives, chronological improvements, emerging statistical approaches, and/or climate simulations that help identify, quantify, and interpret transient vs. abrupt climate changes across Quaternary glacial-interglacial cycles.

The session welcomes participants beyond the INTIMATE network who contribute to its central aims: progress on relative or absolute chronological methods, the reduction of reconstruction uncertainties, multi-site integration towards common timescales (e.g., to the Greenland event stratigraphy), a dedicated use of model-data or multi-proxy comparisons to disentangle climate or ecosystem signals, and exploring teleconnections, i.e., linking impacts to different climate system components across time and space.

We particularly invite studies that improve our understanding of atmosphere–ocean linkages of extreme climate events (e.g., AMOC weakening), those that seek to separate signals of changing seasonality and/or temperature vs. hydroclimate and their implications on past societies, as well as ecosystems. Where applicable, we encourage contributions that reflect on the potential implications of past climate shifts for: (1) understanding future climate change; (2) assessing impacts on terrestrial ecosystems and societies; and (3) identifying links between extreme climate states on land and changes in ocean circulation, external forcing, internal climate variability, or volcanic activity.

Tectonic processes continuously reshape Earth’s surface, actively forming mountains, basins and modifying drainage networks. Through uplift, deformation and erosion, tectonics generates spatial and temporal variation in topography, substrate, soils and hydrology. These changes can influence the distribution and connectivity of habitats, create or remove dispersal barriers, generate refugia and influence patterns of species persistence, turnover, adaptation and diversification.
Despite increasing recognition of these links, the mechanisms and timescales through which tectonic and landscape processes influence biodiversity and their feedbacks remain poorly constrained. This session aims to bridge this gap by bringing together tectonics, geomorphology, geochronology, biogeography, ecology and evolutionary biology to explore these connections across spatial and temporal scales.
We invite contributions that explore how tectonic and surface processes influence landscape heterogeneity, habitat connectivity, environmental gradients, species distributions and diversification, and / or how biological processes affect Earth dynamics. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary studies combining geological/geographical and biological observations, models or datasets to identify and quantify the processes linking Earth dynamics, landscape evolution and biodiversity.

Despite methodological advances in functional microbial ecology, integrating this wealth of data into microbial biogeochemical models remains challenging. Data such as omics, stable isotope probing (SIP), and activity measurements can improve our fundamental understanding of biogeochemical cycles, and consequently increase model realism, and reduce uncertainty in model predictions, especially under scenarios of global change. Yet, a substantial knowledge gap remains in how this integration could be achieved. How can models invoke mechanisms that can be interrogated experimentally? What information can realistically be integrated and how much improvement can we expect? At the same time, how can we leverage model-generated hypotheses to design novel experiments to advance empirical ecology and theory?
This session aims to bring together empirical microbial studies and process-based modeling to close this gap. We welcome contributions using omics, SIP, activity-based approaches, and other methods targeting microbial functional traits, as well as modeling studies applying trait-based parameterization, genome-scale metabolic models, machine-learning-based trait inference, or data assimilation. We are particularly interested in how quantitative microbial traits that determine rates of biogeochemical cycling can be extracted from measurements to define functional groups that inform trait-based models. We envision presentations covering these topics in any biogeochemical context-from soils to sediments, from wetlands to oceans.

The subsurface hosts a biosphere in which microbial activities are tightly coupled to geological and biogeochemical processes. Across aquifers, sediments, and deep continental and oceanic crust, microorganisms obtain energy and nutrients from minerals, fluids, gases, and organic matter while transforming minerals, fluid chemistry, and elemental fluxes. Fundamental questions remain about how microorganisms persist under severe energy limitation, how geological and hydrological conditions regulate microbial ecophysiology and metabolism, and when microbial activity becomes significant for subsurface biogeochemical cycling.
This session explores reciprocal interactions between subsurface microorganisms and their geological environments. We welcome studies examining how mineralogy, fluid chemistry, redox conditions, hydrological connectivity, and energy availability shape microbial diversity, community assembly, activity, and metabolism, as well as how microorganisms drive mineral dissolution and precipitation, redox transformations, and mineral-mediated electron transfer.
Key topics include microbial survival under energy and nutrient limitation and physicochemical extremes; utilization of mineral-associated nutrients and geologically derived electron donors and acceptors; extracellular electron transfer; coupled carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, iron, methane, hydrogen, and other elemental cycles; syntrophy; cryptic cycling; and microbial production and consumption of greenhouse gases.
We encourage studies linking hydrological dynamics to geomicrobiological processes, including effects of groundwater flow, fluid mixing, connectivity, and redox fluctuations on microbial activity, reaction fronts, and biogeochemical hotspots. Applications to groundwater quality, contaminant attenuation, geological carbon storage, underground hydrogen storage, radioactive-waste disposal, and subsurface resource recovery are also within scope, as are studies of early Earth analogues and extraterrestrial habitability.
We welcome interdisciplinary approaches combining field observations, cultivation, multi-omics, isotope tracing, microscale imaging, mineralogical characterization, electrochemical measurements, and reactive transport modelling. By bringing together microbiologists, geochemists, mineralogists, hydrologists, biogeochemists, and planetary scientists, this session aims to advance a predictive understanding of subsurface life and its role in Earth-system biogeochemistry.

Plants and microorganisms in human space exploration play a key role in Bio-regenerative Life Support Systems (BLSS) for resource regeneration, food production, and crew well-being. Establishing sustainable extraterrestrial ecosystems requires an integrative understanding of how multiple space factors influence biological processes and bioregenerative elemental cycles in orbital platforms and planetary habitats.
This session focuses on plant and microbial responses to space factors, including altered gravity, ionizing radiation, and extreme geochemical constraints (e.g., regolith for In-situ Resource Utilization – ISRU), associated with spaceflight and planetary habitats. Altered gravity and ionizing radiation can affect metabolic, morpho-functional, and reproductive traits. When combined with unconventional growth substrates (e.g., lunar and Martian regolith), modified pressure, limited volumes, and reduced resources, these stressors produce complex, non-linear biological responses.
We invite contributions covering, but not limited to:
• Space Plant Biology: Molecular, epigenetic, morpho-anatomical, and physiological responses for acclimation and adaptation of plants to real or simulated space stressors
• Space Microbiology: Molecular, cellular, and other physiological and evolutionary responses of microorganisms to factors in BLSS
• Crop Performance and stress physiology in controlled systems
• Plant-Microbe Interactions & Microbiomes: Dynamics of microbial communities, plant-pathogen relationships, and the role of beneficial microorganisms in space cultivation
• ISRU & Pedogenesis: Regolith processing, bio-weathering, biomining, phytomining, organic matter accumulation, and the biotransformation of planetary materials into synthetic fertile soils
• Biogeochemical Cycling in BLSS: Nutrient dynamics (C, H, O, N, P, S, water, trace elements) and closed-loop life support system integration
• Experimental Platforms & Translation: Results from spaceflight missions, ground-based analogs, predictive modeling, and translation into strategies
• Planetary protection: Technologies, methods, and strategies to minimize the risks of forward contamination by microorganisms used in, or associated with, BLSS
By bridging plant biology, geomicrobiology, biogeochemistry, astrobiology, and space engineering, this session aims to advance an integrative understanding to drive sustainable deep-space exploration while informing solutions for resilient terrestrial agriculture.

The concept of Earth as the sole body in the Solar System with liquid water that can harbor microbial life has been overturned by the discovery of multiple 'ocean worlds'. The Solar System is home to several planetary bodies with subsurface oceans of liquid water, including icy satellites such as Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Enceladus, Titan and Triton, as well as dwarf planets like Pluto, and chief among these ocean worlds, the Earth. Furthermore, new icy and ocean worlds are being continuously discovered in other planetary systems as well. Like Earth, the exploration of these oceans includes both aspects of planetary evolution and habitability. The geodynamic role of oceans in planetary evolution is thus a crucial aspect of understanding not only planet formation, but the onset of biological activity as well. In what ways can the oceans of Earth serve as analogs for other oceans of the Solar System? What instrumentation can be implemented on the Earth now to further our understanding of these ocean worlds, and what technological advances might we expect in future exploration of subsurface liquid water environments beyond Earth?

This session focuses on analog sites, laboratory simulation, modeling, instrumentation and mission proposals. Coordination between Earth, marine and planetary science communities is encouraged, as well as emphasis on upcoming (e.g. JUICE and Dragonfly) and proposed missions (e.g. Enceladus Orbilander). Analog sites might encompass either geological or biological themes in the broader frame of habitability. Interfaces of ice-water (e.g. underside of floating ice shelfs and subglacial lakes), clathrate-water (e.g. ocean floor sediments, veins/fractures/faults, layered horizons and atmosphere particulates), seafloor-ocean, and rock-ice (i.e. glaciers) are of particular curiosity. Instrumentation includes sensors, buoys, submersibles, drilling and coring, as well as satellite instrumentation (e.g. spectrometers, magnetometers and gravimeters).

Direct flux measurements of heat, water, greenhouse gasses (GHGs) and pollutants between the earth’s surface and its atmosphere unlock fair and equitable climate solutions across natural and built environments. Innovations and markets based on such an approach help resolve global climate and air quality challenges and fairly reward small and big stakeholders.

This session, organized collaboratively by research and industry, welcomes ideas and examples of how to utilize direct flux measurements for tangible societal benefits, such as carbon removal, agriculture and forestry, reduction of anthropogenic emissions, environmental impact management, and more. For instance, these measurements can be applied to irrigation scheduling, soil and plant treatments, GHG reduction and sequestration, global warming potential, urban heat management, satellite and model products, industry emissions, severe weather impacts, air quality management, and can be used as a diagnostic tool for meeting net-zero targets by different organizations, regulatory, and government agencies.

Join us to discuss together developing a global paradigm for maximum-integrity, low-latency and economically sound earth stewardship, anchored in direct flux measurements.

Agriculture is at the center of the climate and biodiversity crises as it is both a major contributor to GHG emissions and a driver of species loss, freshwater depletion and eutrophication while also being highly exposed to rising temperatures, water scarcity and extreme events. Nature-based solutions (NbS) in agricultural landscapes are increasingly considered multifunctional practices and transformative measures that can support climate change adaptation and mitigation, restore soil health and water regulation, and support biodiversity. Yet implementation remains uneven: trade-offs with food production and carbon stocks can emerge where agriculture expands into semi-natural land, practices must be tailored to local biophysical and socio-cultural contexts and scaled from field to landscape, and uptake depends on the knowledge networks and processes that connect farmers, science and policy. EU policies set binding targets for restoring degraded ecosystems and promote NbS as a means to reconcile food production with climate and biodiversity objectives, making scientific evidence on their effectiveness a research and policy priority. At the same time, critical perspectives caution against technocratic framings of NbS that overlook governance, equity and the role of indigenous and local knowledge systems in delivering transformative outcomes.
This session invites contributions that advance the process-based understanding, field- and landscape-scale implementation, and monitoring of NbS in agricultural landscapes for climate change adaptation and mitigation. We welcome studies on GHG, soil carbon and nutrient cycling, and water regulation under NbS practices such as agroforestry, conservation and regenerative agriculture, crop and landscape diversification, hedgerows, buffer strips, restored wetlands and silvopastoral systems. Particular attention will be made to studies on empirical data from active land transformations, farm conversions, and nature restoration initiatives. We also welcome experimental and modelling approaches quantifying synergies and trade-offs between production, climate and conservation objectives, as well as monitoring through long-term experiments, inventories, sensor networks, Earth observation, and participatory approaches assessing the persistence and scalability of NbS outcomes. Moreover, contributions addressing the socio-economic, governance and knowledge-transfer dimensions that shape adoption practices will be considered.

Climate change is increasing the frequency, extent, and severity of forest disturbances, including drought, heatwaves, fires, windthrow, pathogens, insect outbreaks, and their compound effects. These disturbances can cause rapid carbon losses through reduced productivity, increased mortality, and reshape forest structure and composition. At the same time, forests face diversifying management pressures: growing wood demand is driving more intensive harvesting, while climate and biodiversity goals are expanding restoration and conservation efforts. Therefore, climate-driven disturbances and management interventions increasingly co-occur and interact, making it critical to understand how forests will reconcile or trade off carbon sequestration, wood provision, and biodiversity conservation.
This session focuses on detecting and attributing forest disturbances, quantifying their ecological and carbon consequences, and evaluating management responses across spatial and temporal scales. We invite studies that combine remote sensing, forest inventories, eddy-covariance observations, atmospheric inversions, experiments, machine learning, and process-based models to monitor disturbance occurrence and severity; distinguish natural disturbances from anthropogenic interventions; quantify impacts on productivity, biomass, mortality, regeneration, and carbon fluxes; and track post-disturbance changes in forest structure, composition, and function. We particularly welcome data-driven and AI-enabled approaches that integrate complementary observations across spatial and temporal scales, constrain model representations of mortality and recovery, and evaluate management pathways and their synergies and trade-offs across carbon sequestration, wood provision, biodiversity conservation, and forest resilience.
The session will connect advances in forest disturbance monitoring, impact attribution, and management-relevant modelling to identify pathways that reconcile carbon sequestration, sustainable wood provision, biodiversity conservation, and forest resilience, providing an evidence base for forest management and policy decisions under intensifying climate and societal pressures.

Although peatlands cover only about 3% of the Earth's surface, they store roughly one third of the global soil organic carbon. They also play a key role in water regulation, flood attenuation, and the conservation of rare and threatened species. Centuries of drainage, peat extraction, agricultural conversion, deforestation, grazing and burning (a trend that is now being compounded by climate change) have degraded a large proportion of these ecosystems, turning long-term carbon sinks into active carbon sources. Reversing this trend has therefore become an explicit policy objective. The EU Nature Restoration Regulation sets out binding targets for restoring and rewetting drained organic soils. Meanwhile, the European Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, the LULUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry) Regulation, national greenhouse gas inventories and voluntary carbon codes all stipulate that the extent, condition and change of peatlands must be consistently and repeatedly documented over large areas. However, meeting these requirements remains a scientific challenge. Peatland boundaries are often poorly mapped or misclassified in land cover databases. Ecohydrological condition is difficult to observe directly. Furthermore, degradation and recovery evolve over years to decades, and field networks are sparse in the remote regions where peatlands are most extensive.
The aim of this session is to bring together the full range of approaches used to observe, quantify and interpret peatland extent, condition and dynamics, and to connect them to ecosystem functioning, carbon accounting and management. Contributions are welcome on the following topics, but not limited to: mapping and inventories of peat soils, including updating and validating existing databases; optical, multispectral, hyperspectral and thermal Earth Observation (EO); LiDAR, UAV and airborne surveys; airborne and radiometric; SAR backscatter, coherence, polarimetry and InSAR surface motion; multi-source data fusion and time-series analysis; in-situ monitoring of water tables, peat properties and greenhouse gas fluxes; ecohydrological modelling; and the assessment of rewetting and restoration effectiveness. Studies dealing with all peatland types and climatic settings, from boreal and permafrost peatlands to temperate blanket bogs, mountain mires, coastal and tropical peatlands, and at all scales, from single sites to continental products, are equally welcome.

Peatlands play a significant role in regulating Earth’s climate system, storing around 30% of global soil organic carbon. Emissions from drained and degraded peatlands contribute around 4% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and are a substantial share of the national GHG budget of some countries. Peatland degradation can also cause subsidence, altered hydrology and increased flood risk, reduced water quality, biodiversity loss and increased fire risk, while intact peatlands support hydrological regulation, nutrient cycling, habitats and cultural values. Because these processes operate at landscape scale but are subject to policy at national scale, land-use inventories and GHG accounting depend on spatially explicit information over large areas.
Recent policy, such as the EU Nature Restoration Regulation, aims to rewet and restore drained peatlands to reduce emissions, sequester CO₂ and improve ecosystem services - often in landscapes with competing land-use interests. Implementation of rewetting and restoration at scale requires not only robust policy but accurate inventories, monitoring, and models that provide information on peatland status and the effectiveness and trade-offs of different measures. National monitoring efforts can vary in completeness and depth and are often based on historical categories and data. Harmonisation is increasingly required to enable benchmarking and compatibility with international reporting standards.
This session invites contributions on peatland systems globally that address 1) GHG accounting, especially higher-tier methods, emission factors and activity data, 2) monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) schemes, 3) mapping of peatland extent, depth, subsidence, water table and condition, 4) national and international standards for carbon markets, and 5) economic and social aspects of peatland rewetting for restoration or paludiculture. We welcome studies on methodological development, field measurements, remote sensing, modelling and interdisciplinary studies, including site-level research where it informs assessment at larger scales.

Peatland restoration for conservation purposes has been implemented for decades now, but recently the focus has been shifting towards a reconciliation of the production of biomass with ecological goals, especially the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while peatland management in conservation-focusses projects increasingly has to be adapted to climate change. Management measures include, but are not limited to, productive use of wet peatlands (paludiculture), improved water management in conventional agriculture and forestry, photovoltaic on wet peatlands, solutions for peat originating from infrastructure projects and innovative approaches in conservation-focused rewetting projects. We invite studies addressing all types of peatland management and their impacts on GHG exchange, ecosystem services and biodiversity. Work on all spatial scales from laboratory to global level addressing biogeochemical and biological aspects as well as experimental and modelling studies are welcome. Furthermore, we invite contributions addressing policy coherence e.g., in the context of the EU Nature Restoration Law and evaluating policy instruments for initiating and implementing new management practices on organic soils. Implementation and efficiency of management practices depends not only on hydrogeology and climate but also on other regional factors. Therefore, we hope to host contributions from different geographical regions where peatlands are important including boreal, temperate and tropical peatlands.

Mangrove ecosystems provide a series of services, such as coastal protection, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity support. Despite the growing popularity of restoration initiatives, many of them continue to show low long-term survival rates. The main cause for this is the disregard for hydrological and sedimentological constraints as well as poor monitoring protocols. This session aims to connect researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, and others to combine ecological research, engineering principles, and coastal management experience. The empirical evidence, guidelines, and practical insights have the potential to subsidize the improvement of mangrove restoration strategies.
We invite submissions addressing, but not only, the following themes: 1) case studies and lessons learned; 2) hydrology and geomorphology; 3) restoration methodologies; 4) monitoring and blue carbon accounting; and 5) socio-ecological dynamics.

Nature-related decisions in finance, policy and official statistics increasingly require credible, scalable and spatially explicit evidence. Yet translating Earth observation and in situ measurements into fit-for-purpose indicators remains difficult. This session connects remote sensing, ecology, environmental sciences, accounting, finance and decision-makers to examine indicator validity, uncertainty, spatial and temporal scale, methodological transparency, data provenance, and fitness for use.

We invite integrated contributions linking remote sensing or ecological methods to at least one concrete accounting, disclosure or market application. Topics include, but are not limited to, mapping and assessing ecosystem condition and services, biodiversity intactness, land use intensity, anthropogenic pressures, and water-related environmental indicators; combining Earth observation with field data and models; addressing baselines, uncertainty, scale and change; and ensuring data traceability, reproducibility, validation and auditability. Applications may include national environmental-economic accounts, including ecosystem accounts implemented under SEEA Ecosystem Accounting; TNFD-aligned reporting by companies and financial institutions; and monitoring, reporting and verification for biodiversity and nature-based carbon credits.

The session will bring together Earth observation, environmental and ecological scientist, nature accountants, policymakers, standards and assurance specialists, and financial practitioners to compare what indicator producers can robustly deliver with what users need for real decisions. We particularly welcome co-designed and operational case studies, including critical assessments of where indicators fail or are misapplied, rather than only new maps or algorithms.

Essential Variables (EVs) provide a common framework for characterising key components of the Earth system, but their potential extends beyond observation and monitoring. This session explores how EV frameworks can connect heterogeneous observing systems, from Research Infrastructures (RIs) such as ICOS and ACTRIS, to satellite data and models, and support the transformation of essential observations into actionable climate information.
European Environmental Research Infrastructures (ENVRI) are a key part of this integration layer. Beyond providing observations, RIs contribute long-term stewardship, calibration and quality assurance, standards, provenance, data and access services, computational environments and increasingly integrated information services. Together with satellites and models, these capabilities provide operational foundations for connecting observations across domains and scales.
We focus on interfaces where integration remains difficult:
• EV frameworks and harmonisation: ECVs, EOVs, EBVs; definitions, metadata, provenance and harmonisation across domains, RIs and satellite data.
• Interoperability and integration: FAIR and semantic interoperability, machine-actionable data, persistent identifiers, and integration of RI, satellite, model and other environmental observations.
• Scale and uncertainty: Integration across spatial and temporal scales; uncertainty, consistency, traceability and fitness-for-purpose.
• Infrastructures enabling integration: Stewardship, quality assurance, access services, data spaces, digital twins, cloud/HPC environments, knowledge graphs and other technical and organisational architectures.
• Translation into climate services and decision support: From Analysis-Ready Data to Action-Ready Information; co-creation with users and communities; and applications in adaptation, mitigation, risk management and policy.
The session will examine the pathway from EV frameworks and European observing infrastructures to regional and local climate information, climate services and decision support. We welcome contributions demonstrating how RIs, satellite data and models can work together as an integrated infrastructure, and how this can translate observations into meaningful information for climate adaptation, mitigation, environmental management and policy support.

Deltas and estuaries are dynamic landscapes shaped by interactions among river flow, tides, waves, sediment transport, and biota. Their hydrology and geomorphology support ecosystems and human activities, while interactions with ecological and biogeochemical processes influence their physical evolution. Accelerating sea-level rise, changes in river discharge and sediment supply, extreme storms and floods, subsidence, and human interventions are reshaping the delicate balance of processes that sustain these environments. Understanding how landscapes respond to these pressures, including nonlinear responses and thresholds of change, is essential for assessing their future trajectories and developing effective adaptation and management strategies.
This session brings together research on the biophysical processes shaping deltaic and estuarine landscapes and on strategies for their adaptation, restoration, and sustainable management. It aims to connect understanding of hydrological and biogeomorphological responses to climatic and anthropogenic pressures with the assessment of management interventions.
We welcome research on the hydrology, morphodynamics, and biogeomorphology of deltas and estuaries, for example addressing river–marine interactions, sediment transport and budgets, feedback between biota and sediment dynamics, and morphological change. Contributions may address the effects of sea-level rise, changing river discharge, storms and floods, subsidence, and human activities, including nonlinear landscape responses and the implications of crossing thresholds. Contributions on adaptation, restoration, and management are equally welcome, including studies of nature-based solutions and conventional engineering approaches grounded in an understanding of physical processes, biogeomorphological interactions, and landscape dynamics. The session embraces theoretical, numerical, and data-driven approaches, including AI, as well as field observations, remote sensing, and experimental studies. We encourage interdisciplinary contributions that connect understanding of physical and biogeomorphological processes with decisions about the future of deltas and estuaries.

Climate change poses a significant threat to sustainability. It disproportionately affects different social groups, intensifying interconnected risks across socio-ecological systems and challenging conventional approaches to disaster risk reduction and adaptation. These challenges are particularly pronounced in climate-sensitive ecosystems, such as arid and semi-arid regions, where land degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and socio-economic vulnerability intersect.

Nature-based and community-led strategies offer effective, context-specific solutions that reduce climate risks, restore ecosystems, enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services, and support local livelihoods, enabling sustainable and equitable adaptation even in highly constrained environments such as drylands.

This session invites contributions that explore how nature-based and community-led approaches support disaster risk reduction, ecosystem restoration, and climate change adaptation across diverse ecological and socio-economic contexts, with a particular focus on research that:
- Assesses the effectiveness of these strategies in reducing risk and enhancing climate resilience
- Examines socio-ecological trade-offs and synergies by integrating ecological and social science perspectives within systems-based approaches
- Evaluates long-term resilience and restoration outcomes across varied ecological and socio-economic contexts, including arid and semi-arid landscapes
- Engages with Indigenous and local knowledge systems, emphasizing culturally grounded and community-driven solutions
- Investigates governance challenges, structural barriers, and enabling conditions, and explores inclusive frameworks that support equity, participation, and sustainability
- Investigates synergies and trade-offs between nature-based approaches and conventional measures
- Examines the effectiveness, resilience, and scalability of specific nature-based solution typologies (e.g., water harvesting, vegetation restoration, agroforestry)
- Examines innovative monitoring and assessment tools (e.g., citizen science, remote sensing, hydrological modelling, eDNA, AI) to evaluate, optimize, and scale nature-based and community-led strategies

This session is supported by the RISK-KAN Working Group on “Nature-Based and Community-Led Climate Risk Strategies.” Contributions from diverse regions are welcome, with a particular emphasis on early-career researchers and practitioners from underrepresented areas.

Global initiatives such as REDD+, afforestation, reforestation, and restoration place forests at the centre of climate action. Yet these measures are highly context dependent and can create synergies and trade-offs across carbon sequestration, water availability, biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and human well-being.
Afforestation can enhance carbon sequestration, reduce erosion, regulate soil moisture, and support atmospheric moisture recycling, while in some contexts reducing streamflow, altering surface albedo, or changing groundwater recharge. Forest change can also affect evapotranspiration, precipitation recycling, and downwind water availability, highlighting the importance of green water processes and governance across spatial scales, administrative boundaries, and sectors.
The long-term effectiveness of forest-based climate action also depends on the capacity of forests as social–ecological systems to cope with, adapt to, and transform in response to disturbances and changing conditions. Compound and cascading disturbances, including drought, wildfire, heat, pests, and land-use pressures, can interact with institutional constraints and competing societal demands to undermine resilience.

This session aims to advance understanding of how forests can contribute to climate mitigation and adaptation while maintaining or strengthening social–ecological resilience under changing hydroclimatic and societal conditions. We welcome interdisciplinary studies, modelling approaches, case studies, governance analyses, and decision-support tools addressing trade-offs, compound and cascading risks, and green water governance, including:

· Social–ecological resilience, including adaptation, learning, participation, and cross-sectoral and cross-scale governance of the forest-water nexus
· Forest–water–climate interactions, including soil moisture, evapotranspiration, moisture recycling, and blue–green water linkages
· Co-benefits and trade-offs of forest-based mitigation for carbon sequestration, water availability, biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and society
· Forest disturbances, compound and cascading impacts, institutional capacity, and adaptation
· New indicators, scenarios, and decision-support approaches for resilient forest management
. Forest–green and blue water governance, including monitoring, transboundary dependencies, cross-scale coordination, and cross-sectoral decision-making.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are embedded in climate-adaptation, disaster-risk-reduction, biodiversity, and water-management agendas. As climate change intensifies floods, droughts, heat, and water scarcity, NbS can strengthen water security and social, ecological, and economic resilience. Moving from promising interventions to transformative change requires credible evidence at decision-relevant scales: where, when, and for whom NbS work; how performance changes under compound hazards and future climates; how benefits and burdens are distributed; and which governance, finance, and stewardship arrangements sustain outcomes beyond pilots.
This session examines how NbS can move from isolated interventions towards interconnected portfolios and system-wide pathways for climate-resilient landscapes. We welcome inter- and transdisciplinary contributions that:
• quantify performance, uncertainty, thresholds, failure modes, and long-term change using monitoring, experiments, modeling, or Earth observation;
• improve spatial targeting, design, and adaptive management through integrated models, AI, digital twins, multi-criteria assessment, or other decision-support approaches;
• evaluate NbS portfolios and hybrid green-grey systems under floods, droughts, heat, water scarcity, erosion, and compound or cascading risks, including lifecycle cost-effectiveness across NbS, grey, and hybrid options (investment, maintenance, and replacement costs);
• assess co-benefits and trade-offs for water security, biodiversity, carbon, health, livelihoods, and infrastructure, including distributional equity and maladaptation;
• investigate multi-level and cross-sector co-creation, Indigenous and local knowledge, governance, standards, finance, procurement, maintenance, and institutional capacity for implementation and upscaling; and
• share comparative, transferability, or implementation evidence from urban, rural, riverine, coastal, and infrastructure landscapes, including underrepresented regions and negative or inconclusive findings.
We particularly encourage studies integrating at least two dimensions and connecting researchers with practitioners, communities, public authorities, finance actors, infrastructure owners, and decision-makers. Linking Earth-system knowledge with social, economic, and political perspectives, the session aims to advance pathways from individual NbS projects to effective, accountable, and durable system-wide climate and water resilience.

Remote sensing is an essential tool for observing, quantifying, and monitoring forest ecosystems across vast spatial and temporal scales. Advances in sensor technology, data availability, and computational methods enable detailed observations from terrestrial, mobile, UAV, airborne, and space-borne platforms. Optical, multispectral, and hyperspectral imagery, alongside SAR, LiDAR, photogrammetry, and Structure-from-Motion (SfM), provide complementary data on forest composition, structure, function, and dynamics across natural, managed, and urban environments.
The availability of multi-source observations creates unprecedented opportunities but also raises significant scientific challenges. Because forest information is scale-dependent, no single sensor can capture all ecological characteristics. Integrating observations across spatial, temporal, and spectral scales is therefore essential for developing robust, transferable, and scalable approaches. Furthermore, in-situ measurements remain crucial for the calibration, validation, uncertainty assessment, and physical interpretation of remote sensing products.
Remote sensing supports qualitative and quantitative assessments, from mapping forest cover, species, and vegetation characteristics to estimating tree height, DBH, biomass, timber volume, canopy structure, and density. In urban environments, these tools support tree inventories and green infrastructure assessment. At larger scales, remote sensing enables the detection of critical disturbances like fire, drought, and insect outbreaks, supporting sustainable management, carbon monitoring, and ecological modeling.
This session invites research on integrating heterogeneous remote sensing and in-situ observations. We welcome contributions on multi-sensor/multi-platform data fusion, field observations, and methods for transferring information across scales. Submissions may address terrestrial laser scanning, mobile mapping, UAV, airborne, and satellite observations, as well as GeoAI and AI-based approaches (machine learning, deep learning, foundation models, transfer learning, and domain adaptation). We emphasize methodological developments and operational applications, with interest in uncertainty, validation, scalability, transferability, generalization, interpretability, and reproducibility.

Forests are dynamic systems increasingly affected by natural and anthropogenic disturbances, including wildfire, drought, storms, insects, disease, logging and land-use change. These disturbances influence individual trees, forest structure and composition, carbon storage, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning, while forest recovery varies across spatial and temporal scales. Understanding these dynamics across scales is critical for assessing ecosystem resilience, quantifying forests’ contributions to the global carbon cycle, and supporting sustainable forest management under a changing climate.
This session highlights advances in remote sensing for detecting, characterizing and predicting forest disturbance, recovery and resilience across scales. We welcome contributions using optical, SAR, LiDAR, hyperspectral and thermal observations, together with time-series analysis, machine learning, ecological modeling, and data fusion. We particularly encourage studies that: (1) identify early warning signals of tree- and forest-level changes; (2) detect and quantify disturbance and recovery at tree, plot, forest, and landscape scales; (3) characterize changes in tree and forest structure, biomass, carbon, and function; (4) integrate observations across spatial and temporal scales; and (5) combine field measurements, process-oriented models and multi-source Earth observations to assess and simulate forest dynamics and resilience. Contributions using emerging satellite missions and novel approaches to connect tree-level processes with forest- and landscape-scale patterns are especially welcome.

Life on Earth depends on a thin and dynamic layer at the interface of atmosphere, vegetation, soil, and water. Within this complex system, remote sensing (RS) provides unique insights by capturing signals generated through the interaction of incoming, reflected, and emitted electromagnetic (EM) radiation with these surfaces. Vegetation, soil, and water play a critical role as mediators between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere, and their properties can be observed through optical, thermal, and microwave remote sensing, including fluorescence signals across the EM spectrum.

This session invites contributions that advance our understanding of the biosphere through strategies, methods, and applications of remote sensing. We welcome studies on:
• Integrating RS data across spectral regions, angular configurations, and fluorescence signals
• Combining RS with in-situ measurements for modelling carbon, water and nutrients cycles
• Applications in climate change mitigation and adaptation, food production and security, sustainable development, land and nature conservation and protection, biodiversity, epidemiology, and public health (e.g., allergenic pollen-related impacts)
• Air pollution from both natural and anthropogenic sources (e.g., fires emissions, GHG emissions form land-sector, VOCs)
• Data assimilation of RS and in-situ observations in bio-geophysical, land surface models and atmospheric models
• Innovative RS signal extraction and processing techniques
We encourage submissions showcasing novel approaches, interdisciplinary applications, and case studies that highlight the growing potential of remote sensing for addressing urgent environmental and societal challenges.

Robust, policy-relevant assessments of the terrestrial carbon cycle depend on reconciling top-down (atmospheric inversion) and bottom-up (process model, inventory) estimates - which continue to show persistent regional disagreement in the magnitude (and sometimes in the sign) of land carbon fluxes. Closing this gap requires better integration of Earth Observation (EO), in-situ measurements, and process-based models through data assimilation, alongside improved representation of the disturbances (fire, land management, drought) that drive much of today's uncertainty in regional carbon fluxes.
We welcome contributions on: EO-based characterisation of ecosystem and canopy structure, disturbance, and carbon dynamics; the use of EO and in-situ data to constrain, evaluate, or improve process-based land surface and dynamic vegetation models; data assimilation and model-data fusion techniques merging observations into carbon cycle and Earth system models; disturbance representation in models; and regional-to-global carbon budget assessments reconciling top-down and bottom-up approaches, including near-real-time systems and applications relevant to national greenhouse gas inventories.
This session is co-organised by members of the NextGenCarbon and CONCERTO Horizon Europe projects and the ESA THRAC3E project, aligned with the carbon flagship of the EC-ESA Earth System Science Initiative.

Quantifying biodiversity and assessing its role in preserving ecosystem functions is essential for mitigating biodiversity loss and sustaining ecosystem services. However, large-scale quantification of plant diversity requires cost-effective and comparable methodologies to enable global and frequent mapping of plant diversity. New methods, such as remote sensing, genomics, or artificial intelligence might enable such global monitoring. This information could be combined with independent measurements or model-based estimates of ecosystem functions to characterize the role of plant diversity in maintaining ecosystem functions and services.
Despite the potential of this approach, numerous conceptual gaps and methodological challenges still need to be overcome. On one side, the new technological alternatives to quantify plant diversity face conceptual and methodological gaps with traditional field ecology. These gaps should be filled, or the limitations of each technology well understood, so that the information provided is adequately used. On the other hand, the analysis of biodiversity-ecosystem functions must account for numerous additional factors to avoid spurious relationships and, therefore, a misunderstood role of how diversity supports ecosystem services.
This session calls for recent studies showing advances in this field. We welcome both specialized and multidisciplinary contributions that advance the estimation of plant diversity and the use of these estimates to assess its role in the stability, resilience, and magnitude of ecosystem functions and services. The session is also open to out-of-the-box approaches and biodiversity studies involving taxa beyond plants.

Ecosystem models remain limited by how they represent key ecological and biogeochemical processes and their responses to climate variability, extremes, and long-term environmental change. Persistent challenges include representing vegetation demography and trait diversity, acclimation and adaptation, stress responses and disturbances, carbon allocation, and coupled carbon–nutrient–water cycles. Uncertainties and biases in these process representations limit our ability to predict ecosystem dynamics and further climate feedbacks. Meanwhile, rapidly expanding Earth observations, data-synthesis efforts, and advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are creating new opportunities for ecosystem process development, including identifying missing process connections, emulating computationally demanding components, and complementing certain processes.
This session brings together scientists working on process-based, data-driven, and hybrid approaches to advance process understanding in land ecosystem modelling. Contributions may address model development, benchmarking and evaluation, uncertainty reduction, or the integration of ecological knowledge and observations into models.
We invite abstracts addressing one or more of the following themes:
1. Advances in representing ecosystem responses to climate variability, extremes, disturbances, or long-term environmental change;
2. Improved representation of vegetation demography and dynamics, species interactions, functional diversity, acclimation, adaptation, and carbon allocation;
3. Advances in modelling biogeochemical processes and interactions, including coupled carbon, nutrient, and water cycles across ecosystems and scales;
4. Applications of AI and machine learning to ecosystem modelling, including process emulation or replacement, parameter estimation, and discovery of missing or poorly represented processes;
5. Emergent constraints, causal inference, and other observation-based approaches for reducing uncertainty in ecosystem responses and land–climate feedbacks;
Session format
The session will include oral and poster presentations. As conveners from five universities, we aim to create a forum to discuss transferable model developments, evaluate emerging datasets and relationships, and share knowledge across modelling frameworks. We plan to host a session dinner to facilitate discussion and networking further, and we will announce more details later.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are increasingly recognised as interdependent processes rather than parallel crises. Shifts in climate reshape species composition, phenology and community structure; biodiversity in turn modulates carbon, water and energy exchange, ecosystem stability and the capacity of ecosystems to buffer climate extremes. Despite this coupling, the two domains are still largely investigated with separate observational systems, model families and scientific communities. Closing that gap is a prerequisite for credible projections of ecosystem functioning and for the ecosystem services that societies depend on.
This session invites contributions that explicitly address the climate–biodiversity nexus and its consequences for ecosystem functioning and service delivery. We welcome work across terrestrial, freshwater and coastal ecosystems, from the plot to the continental scale, and across natural, agricultural, forest and urban systems.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Joint effects of climate variability, extremes and biodiversity change on productivity, carbon and water fluxes, and ecosystem stability and resilience;
• Integrated monitoring of climate and biodiversity — flux towers, ecological and biodiversity networks, eDNA, acoustic and camera-based sensing, satellite and airborne remote sensing, and the fusion of these streams;
• Process-based, trait-based and coupled climate–ecosystem models that represent biodiversity explicitly;
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning for detecting biodiversity and functional change, upscaling in-situ observations, emulating and constraining models, and handling sparse or heterogeneous ecological data;
• Quantification, mapping and valuation of ecosystem services under combined climate and biodiversity pressures;
• Evidence supporting nature-based solutions, restoration and adaptation planning, including uncertainty communication and use in policy and climate services.
We particularly encourage submissions that cross disciplinary boundaries — combining ecology, climate science, remote sensing and data science — and contributions from early career scientists.

Terrestrial ecosystems function varies substantially within a single day: plant water and carbon exchange, canopy temperature, and land–atmosphere coupling all shift with light, heat, and moisture over the course of hours. Yet our understanding of ecosystem function is still largely built from daily-to-monthly observations, leaving sub-daily dynamics underexplored despite their relevance to heat and drought stress, phenological transitions, and rapid disturbance.
Recent advances are changing this. Eddy covariance networks continue to provide high-frequency flux records, while geostationary satellites (e.g. MSG, GOES, Himawari) now deliver sub-hourly imagery of vegetation, land surface temperature, and land–atmosphere exchange. Complementary tools, such as phenocams, proximal and UAS-based sensing, and diurnal solar-induced fluorescence, add further resolution to how ecosystems respond across the day.
This session invites contributions that use these and other approaches to characterize ecosystem function at the diurnal scale. We welcome studies on diurnal cycles of carbon, water, and energy exchange; vegetation and phenological dynamics at sub-daily resolution; formation of clouds, detection of rapid ecosystem stress or disturbance; and methodological advances in data fusion, upscaling or modelling that resolve sub-daily processes. We particularly encourage contributions that bridge observation platforms and spatial scales, from tower to landscape to continent, to build a more complete picture of how ecosystems function across the day.

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) and hyperspectral sensing offer complementary perspectives on vegetation physiology, biochemistry and structure. Connecting these observations with ecosystem processes presents opportunities to improve assessments of photosynthesis, vegetation stress and productivity in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems for climate change adaptation and mitigation. We welcome contributions on SIF and hyperspectral sensing across leaf, canopy, landscape and global scales. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to. (1) Remote and proximal sensing observations. Advances in satellite SIF and imaging spectroscopy, retrieval algorithms, atmospheric correction, cal&val, cross-sensor harmonization, and integration with ground and airborne data. (2) Radiative transfer modelling. Simulation and interpretation of SIF and reflectance; effects of canopy structure, spectral reabsorption and scattering, and illumination and viewing geometry; and coupling with photosynthesis and land-surface models. (3) Machine learning and model-data fusion. Retrieval of vegetation properties, fusion of SIF and hyperspectral data, integration with ecosystem models, hybrid modelling, uncertainty, and transferability across ecosystems. (4) Vegetation traits and ecosystem processes. Estimation of plant pigments, water content and other functional traits; relationships among SIF, photosynthetic efficiency and gross primary productivity. (5) Natural or managed ecosystem applications. Monitoring crop phenotyping, yield and precision agriculture. Assessment of forest functional diversity, canopy condition, photosynthesis and carbon uptake. Detection of disturbance, recovery, and disease impacts. Monitoring phytoplankton photosynthetic activity and aquatic productivity. (6) Integration across sensors and scales. Combining SIF and hyperspectral observations with thermal, microwave, LiDAR and ecosystem flux measurements, as well as atmospheric CO₂ and carbonyl sulfide (OCS) observations, to connect vegetation structure and function with carbon and water cycling. (7) Climate resilience, mitigation and adaptation. Linking stress indicators with hazard exposure and ecosystem vulnerability to assess risks to productivity and ecosystem function; quantifying resistance, recovery time and legacy effects; evaluating adaptation outcomes under climate extremes; and assessing implications for carbon uptake and climate change mitigation.

ESA’s Fluorescence Explorer (FLEX) is designed to provide new information on vegetation functioning, plant stress and the links between photosynthesis and the carbon and water cycles from space. Flying in tandem with Copernicus Sentinel-3, FLEX combines solar-induced fluorescence (SIF) products with complementary information on vegetation optical properties, surface temperature and atmospheric conditions at 300 m x 300 m spatial resolution.

Following its successful launch on 15 September 2026, FLEX entered its commissioning phase, during which instrument performance, calibration, product quality and end-to-end data processing are assessed and consolidated. These activities are essential to establish the scientific readiness of the mission and to prepare the transition towards routine operations and full scientific exploitation.

This session will provide a forum for presenting and discussing the first results from FLEX commissioning and early mission operations. Particular emphasis will be placed on instrument and data performance, in-flight calibration and characterisation of the FLORIS instrument, and the evaluation of Level-1 and Level-2 products using in-situ validation observations. Contributions addressing FLEX-specific retrieval performance and sensitivity to e.g. atmospheric and surface conditions are welcome.

The session will also include validation of the first FLEX products using ground-based, airborne and independent satellite observations, field campaigns, and other reference datasets. Studies exploiting the tandem configuration with Sentinel-3, including cross-comparisons and synergies between the two missions, are encouraged.

First scientific analyses based on FLEX observations are also welcome, including investigations of spectrally resolved SIF, vegetation functioning and environmental stress. This includes contributions addressing methodologies, datasets and modelling approaches supporting the interpretation and future exploitation of FLEX data.

The session aims to bring together the FLEX mission, calibration and validation, processor development and science communities at a key stage in the mission lifecycle. It will provide an opportunity to review early mission performance, discuss lessons emerging from commissioning, identify remaining challenges, and define priorities for the transition towards routine scientific exploitation of FLEX data.

The use of imaging spectroscopy for monitoring Earth surface processes has progressed rapidly in recent years, driven by the growing availability of spaceborne data from missions such as DESIS, PRISMA, EnMAP and EMIT. These missions have enabled advances in retrieval methods, applications and multi-temporal observations. Regional-to-continental products and emerging global thematic products demonstrate the transition from experimental acquisitions towards systematic Earth observation.

This provides critical building blocks for the next generation of missions, including the Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission for the Environment (CHIME), which will establish an operational European capability with systematic global coverage of land and coastal areas every 11 days. Preparing for CHIME requires robust retrieval algorithms, scalable processing, well-characterised uncertainties, calibration and validation strategies, reference datasets, and methods exploiting spatial and temporal observations in combination with other Copernicus and international missions.

This session focuses on preparing for future global and operational imaging spectroscopy missions through novel methods, products and applications transferable and scalable from current missions to future observing systems. We welcome regional-to-global contributions addressing agriculture, vegetation and forestry, biodiversity and ecosystems, soils, minerals and raw materials, coastal and inland waters, environmental degradation and hazards, and the cryosphere.

Contributions using current spaceborne imaging spectroscopy as precursors for CHIME and other future missions like NASA EAGLE VSWIR are encouraged, including multi-mission harmonisation, time-series analysis, large-scale processing, retrieval robustness and transferability, uncertainty, and synergies with Sentinel and other Earth observation data. Large-scale field campaigns, calibration and validation activities, spectral reference databases and regional in-situ initiatives supporting operational use of imaging spectroscopy data are equally relevant.

The session also welcomes contributions on ongoing international coordination to strengthen interoperability and synergies among current and future missions. By bringing together mission teams, algorithm developers, application scientists and users, it aims to advance sustained, interoperable and operational global imaging spectroscopy in support of Earth System Science and applications.

Drylands cover more than 40% of the Earth's land surface and support over two billion people. These ecosystems provide essential ecosystem services, sustain biodiversity, support food production and pastoral livelihoods, and play an important role in global biogeochemical and climate systems. However, many drylands are increasingly affected by interacting pressures including climate change, land degradation, biodiversity loss, unsustainable land use and resource extraction, leading to declining ecosystem resilience and increasing risks of ecological transition. Therefore, developing integrated tools for assessing and monitoring dryland ecosystems represents a high research priority.
Recent advances in Earth Observation (EO), including long-term satellite archives, hyperspectral sensors, SAR, LiDAR, UAVs and Artificial Intelligence (AI), are transforming our ability to understand dryland dynamics across spatial and temporal scales. These approaches are enabling improved monitoring of vegetation change, ecosystem functioning, degradation processes, restoration outcomes, biodiversity patterns and ecosystem resilience.
Particular attention is being given to the development of EO-based indicators of land degradation, ecosystem condition, ecological integrity, resilience loss and recovery. Emerging EO approaches are also improving our ability to monitor important dryland transition processes such as woody vegetation encroachment, or alterations in vegetation spatial patterns, all modifying the structure and functioning of rangelands, savannahs and shrublands across large regions of the world, with important consequences for ecosystem resilience, biodiversity, fire regimes, ecosystem services and pastoral livelihoods.
The increasing availability of very-high-resolution imagery and hyperspectral datasets is also creating new opportunities for monitoring key but often overlooked dryland components such as biological soil crusts (BSCs), whose influence on soil stability, nutrient cycling, hydrology and ecosystem functioning makes them critical indicators of dryland health, degradation status and ecosystem resilience.

Biophysical parameters have been traditionally measured at the point or plot level on the ground. Remote sensing provides a way to map biophysical parameters at up to the global scale and over decades, with machine learning methods or radiative transfer modeling. This session calls for studies producing various biophysical parameters maps, such as plant traits, phenology, plant species, land cover types, and soil properties etc., using remote sensing observations and discussion on current shortcomings of the gridded datasets.

Despite its considerable potential for agricultural monitoring and precision agriculture, the operational adoption of remote sensing remains limited by several challenges, including the robustness of measurements under varying acquisition conditions and the transferability of models across different environments and datasets. This session aims to address the methodological challenges associated with scaling remote sensing approaches from experimental settings to reliable operational applications in agriculture. We welcome contributions focusing on methods for improving the consistency and comparability of remote sensing measurements under varying acquisition conditions, including atmospheric and weather effects, illumination and viewing geometry, and bidirectional reflectance distribution function corrections. We also encourage studies developing and evaluating robust and transferable models, including AI-based approaches, with particular emphasis on validation using independent datasets and assessment of model generalization across different sites, seasons, crops, sensors, and environmental conditions. The session is open to all remote sensing platforms, including UAS, ground-based and tractor-mounted systems, and satellites, as well as a wide range of sensors, such as RGB, multispectral, hyperspectral, and thermal. Contributions may address diverse agricultural applications, including pest and disease detection, weed mapping, nutrient and chlorophyll assessment, crop monitoring, and yield estimation. By advancing reliable and transferable remote sensing approaches, this session can contribute to evidence-based agricultural and environmental policies by enabling consistent large-scale monitoring of crop conditions, resource use, and climate-related impacts.

Agricultural production is increasingly vulnerable to climate variability, extreme weather, and growing resource limitations. To better understand these challenges and support adaptation, regional crop modeling, whether process-based, data-driven, or hybrid, has become an essential tool for assessing agricultural productivity, food and water security, and the impacts of climate variability and change. At the same time, the growing availability of satellite observations provides unprecedented opportunities to better constrain, calibrate, and validate crop model simulations, from field to continental scale. This session focuses on recent methodological and applied advances in linking regional crop models with Earth observation datasets to improve predictive accuracy and robustness.

We invite contributions that address:
• Advances in regional crop modeling frameworks, including process-based, data-driven (machine learning/AI, statistical), and hybrid approaches
• Data assimilation techniques and model parameterization methodologies
• Integration of remote sensing data into regional crop modeling systems
• Pre- and in-season yield forecasting
• Applications to water use, irrigation, and agro-hydrological monitoring
• Applications to assess and optimize climate change adaptation strategies
• Benchmarking and intercomparison of crop models with remote sensing data

This session brings together researchers in crop modeling, remote sensing, climate science, and data assimilation, spanning both process-based and data-driven approaches, to advance integration across disciplines and tackle global challenges in agriculture, water, and food security. We particularly welcome contributions on coupling satellite-derived soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and vegetation data with crop and land surface models for forecasting and irrigation applications at regional to continental scale.

A transformation towards sustainable agriculture is essential to secure food for both current and future generations while restoring natural resources. Agricultural productivity today faces multiple challenges, including climate change, water scarcity, limited access to essential inputs, socio-economic disparities, and rising global demand for agricultural products. Additionally, agriculture must play a pivotal role in mitigating climate change, reducing environmental pollution, and preserving biodiversity. Addressing these complex demands necessitates a comprehensive evaluation of alternative land management practices across local to global scales, with a focus on assessing entire agricultural production systems rather than isolated products.
This session will address the modeling of agricultural systems in the context of global change, focusing on challenges related to climate change adaptation and mitigation, sustainable intensification, and the environmental impacts of agricultural production. We invite contributions on methodological approaches, data innovations, assessments of climate impacts and adaptation strategies, environmental consequences, greenhouse gas mitigation, and economic evaluations.

Environmental data from large measurement campaigns and automated measurement networks are increasingly available and provide relevant information of the Earth System. However, such data are usually only available as point observations and only represent a small part of the Earth´s surface. Upscaling strategies are hence needed to provide continuous and comprehensive information as a baseline to gain insights on large-scale spatio-temporal dynamics. In the upscaling, machine learning algorithms that can account for complex and nonlinear relationships are increasingly used to link remote sensing datasets to reference measurements. The resulting models are then applied to provide spatially explicit predictions of the target variable, often even on a global scale.
Due to easy access to user-friendly software, model training and spatial prediction using machine learning algorithms is nowadays straightforward at first sight. However, considerable challenges remain: dealing with reference data that are not independent and identically distributed, accounting for spatial heterogeneity when scaling reference measurements to the grid cell scale, appropriately evaluating the resulting maps and quantifying their uncertainties, generating robust maps that do not suffer from extrapolation artifacts as well as the strategies for model interpretation and understanding.
This session invites contributions on the methodology and application of large-scale mapping strategies in different disciplines, including vegetation characteristics such as foliar or canopy traits and photosynthesis, soil characteristics such as soil organic carbon, or atmospheric parameters such as pollutant concentration. Methodological contributions can focus on individual aspects of the upscaling approach, such as the design of measurement campaigns or networks to increase representativeness, novel algorithms or validation strategies, feature attribution/explainability as well as uncertainty assessment.

A robust representation of terrestrial carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles requires a fundamental understanding of biosphere-atmosphere interactions, particularly in the context of a rapidly changing climate. However, a significant challenge arises from the mismatch that occurs when carbon, water, or nitrogen fluxes are measured or modelled at different spatio-temporal scales. Multiple processes determine how mass and energy exchanges scale from the leaf, to the whole plant, to the ecosystem, and eventually to the globe. Despite the evolution of Earth system models to incorporate increasingly complex processes across these scales, uncertainties persist due to these mismatches. The unprecedented rate of climate change, along with the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, further complicates our ability to robustly formulate mechanistic underpinnings of biogeochemical processes across scales.
The increasing volume of data at multiple scales—from leaf-level measurements (e.g., gas exchange), tree-level measurements (e.g., sap flow and dendroecology), ecosystem-level measurements (e.g., eddy covariance towers, UAVs, aircraft), to Earth observation from space—presents new opportunities to address these challenges. This session invites studies that improve our overall understanding of biosphere-atmosphere interactions by addressing the mismatches across different temporal and spatial scales and integrating these insights into modeling strategies. We particularly encourage contributions that explore the effects of climate extremes (e.g., drought, heatwaves, excess rainfall, winter warming) on carbon, nitrogen, and water fluxes. In addition to empirical multi-scale observations, we welcome research that delves into data-driven diagnostics and constraints for model evaluation, data-driven parameterisations in mechanistic models, and the development of data-driven/hybrid modelling strategies (i.e., seamless fusion of data-driven approaches and mechanistic models) for an integrated understanding of carbon, nitrogen, and water fluxes across scales.

Earth system models are essential for understanding and projecting future climate change. However, these models operate at spatial resolutions of tens to hundreds of km, whereas many of the observations and
the processes they aim to represent, occur at much finer spatial scales. Bridging this gap is a fundamental challenge
for Earth system science.
For biosphere processes large-scale models simulate variables such as leaf area index, vegetation productivity, and carbon uptake on grid cells covering thousands of km². In contrast, observations of phenological events at individual plants, eddy-covariance flux measurements towers, or high-resolution remote sensing describe behaviour at much
finer scales. The understanding of these processes, derived from experiments and theory, operates at individual or plot scales.
Aggregation of nonlinear responses make the response to mean conditions differ from the mean of individual responses, while spatial averaging across heterogeneous processes smooths their contrasting sensitivities.
Addressing these scale mismatches requires advances across multiple fronts: sub-grid parameterizations in mechanistic models, observational networks designed to capture spatial heterogeneity, and methods to link fine-scale processes to emergent large-scale behaviour.

Machine learning is being combined with mechanistic Earth system models, offering possibilities and risks. Models trained on plot-level data may predict grid-cell averages without accounting for sub-grid variability, sampling biases, or nonlinear aggregation. Approaches that represent multiple scales, incorporate spatial structure, or learn mappings between individual-level processes and emergent large-scale variables show promise for improving how biosphere processes are represented.
The session aims to foster knowledge exchange between mechanistic modelers, machine learning practitioners, observational scientists, and experimentalist to develop more reliable, scale-consistent approaches for representing and
evaluating biosphere processes in Earth system models. Hence, the session invites contributions on topics including, but not limited to, the following:
• Trait-based upscaling beyond PFTs
• Sub-grid scale modelling, nonlinear spatial aggregation and emergent behaviour
• Upscaling in situ observations to grid scale
• Phenology across spatial scales
• Hybrid ML-physics modelling
• ML solutions to sampling bias
• Learning emergent grid-scale variables

Agriculture covers nearly one-third of the Earth’s land surface and plays a vital role in sustaining global food and fodder production. Yet, it is increasingly threatened by the impacts of climate change while still contributing to biodiversity of loss, soil degradation, and environmental issues. Policy frameworks and regulations at national and EU level create incentives and commitment towards more sustainable management. However, meeting these challenges and needs requires innovative approaches that enhance agricultural resilience, efficiency, and sustainability while reducing the environmental footprint and safeguarding ecosystems.
Recent advances in Earth observation, environmental research infrastructures, monitoring networks (e.g., FLUXNET), and the growing availability of in-situ measurements and open data provide unprecedented opportunities to monitor, understand, and manage agroecosystems. Coupled with advancements in data science, machine learning, and process-based modelling, these tools enable the transition from observation to actionable solutions that support climate-resilient agriculture and sustainable land management.
This session welcomes contributions that explore and integrate diverse approaches—including (but not limited to):
• Large-scale mapping strategies of agroecosystem processes and dynamics.
• Integration of multi-modal remote sensing data (spectral, thermal, high-resolution RGB from current and future satellite constellations, UAVs, or airborne campaigns) with in-situ observations and environmental monitoring networks.
• Applications of machine learning, radiative transfer modelling, and hybrid approaches.
• Foundation model development and applications within agroecosystems and agriculture
• Monitoring or modelling of soil–plant–water interactions and nutrient dynamics.
• Assessment of biotic and abiotic stresses, including water demand and evapotranspiration.
• Quantification of climate change impacts (e.g., biodiversity loss, hydrological extremes, soil degradation, ecosystem shifts) on agricultural systems and their resilience.
Contributions should be presented through a lens that aims not only to advance technical understanding, but also to demonstrate how these efforts translate into practical pathways for improving agroecosystem monitoring and management—across intensively and extensively managed crop and grassland systems—towards a more sustainable and climate-resilient future.

Remote sensing data has become an essential tool for forest analysis, enabling observation of forest cover, structure, and change across large areas and over time. Satellite, airborne, and ground based sensors provide complementary views of forest ecosystems, capturing canopy structure, spectral reflectance, and biomass. A wide range of artificial intelligence and machine learning models, from classical statistical approaches to deep learning architectures such as convolutional networks and transformers, extract meaningful information from these data sources individually. Another direction is to combine these sources through multimodal fusion strategies, at the input, feature, or decision level, bringing together optical, radar, LiDAR, hyperspectral, and UAV based data to capture aspects of forest condition that no single sensor can reveal on its own, while environmental information such as climate, soil, topography, and hydrology can further help explain the underlying drivers of forest dynamics. Building on this, advances in deep learning, self-supervised learning, and foundation models offer new opportunities to learn from such large and heterogeneous datasets and transfer information across sensors, regions, and applications.
Several key questions remain around which data sources and combinations are most informative, how different modalities can be effectively integrated, what training and reference data are needed, and how emerging models can achieve robust and transferable performance across forest ecosystems. This session aims to bring these perspectives together, identify current needs and opportunities, and foster approaches that enable more transferable and scalable forest applications.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Foundation models and pretraining strategies for forest applications
• Multimodal data fusion for forest monitoring
• Deep learning and novel AI and machine learning architectures for forest analysis
• Integration of remote sensing, environmental, and field data
• Tree and forest species mapping, classification, and health assessment
• Forest change over time

We particularly encourage contributions that explore the use of different data sources, multimodal data fusion, foundation models, or new methodological approaches, and we welcome early career scientists and researchers from diverse backgrounds and institutions.

Land-use-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays a prominent role in pathways towards net-zero and net-negative emissions. However, its realised climate benefit cannot be determined from carbon sequestration alone. CDR outcomes are shaped by land-use legacy, atmospheric CO₂, climate change, nutrient availability, ecosystem composition and disturbances. Land-based CDR can also alter surface energy and water exchanges, producing local and remote climate responses that may strengthen or offset its carbon-related benefits.
This session invites studies that use Earth system models to improve understanding of these interactions. We particularly welcome research on coupled carbon–nitrogen cycling and nutrient constraints; biogeochemical and biophysical feedbacks involving albedo, evapotranspiration, surface roughness and hydrology; and remote effects mediated by moisture recycling, atmospheric circulation and climate teleconnections.
Relevant CDR and land-management approaches include afforestation and reforestation (A/R), agroforestry, forest and soil management, peatland restoration, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
We also encourage model development, benchmarking, intercomparison and observational evaluation, alongside assessments of uncertainty, additionality, permanence and reversal risks associated with drought, heat, fire, pests and other disturbances. Studies examining future mitigation pathways, temperature overshoot, declining atmospheric CO₂ and the long-term resilience of terrestrial carbon sinks are especially welcome.

Monitoring carbon and greenhouse gas exchange between atmosphere, land, ocean and human systems underpins the Global Stocktake, national inventories, carbon markets and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Yet bottom-up (inventories, process-based and data-driven models), top-down (atmospheric inversions) and bookkeeping (land-use change) estimates remain uncertain and often disagree, while the credibility of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) rests on independent methods agreeing. Machine learning (ML) offers new ways to enhance, complement, emulate, integrate or even replace established observational, modelling and analytical workflows.

This session invites contributions using ML to advance carbon cycle monitoring and understanding across all compartments (atmosphere, vegetation, soils, permafrost, wetlands, inland waters, coastal and open ocean, anthropogenic sources) and all relevant trace gases, including CO2, CH4, N2O, CO, COS and isotopes. We welcome the full breadth of ML: foundation models, transformers, GNNs, CNNs, generative models (diffusion, flow matching), hybrid and differentiable modelling, Bayesian ML, symbolic regression, interpretable, robust and trustworthy ML, and tabular methods such as gradient-boosted trees. We particularly encourage work bridging science, policy and industry.
Topics include, but are not limited to:

- ML-enhanced bottom-up estimates: upscaling, mapping stocks and fluxes, inventories
- ML for top-down inversions: transport emulators, data assimilation, retrievals, point-source detection
- ML for bookkeeping and land-use change emissions
- Emulators and foundation models for process-based and Earth system models
- Hybrid modelling, and generative models for gap-filling, downscaling and ensemble generation
- Fusion of remote sensing with in-situ data (eddy covariance, flask networks, ocean pCO2)
- ML for carbon cycle process understanding and discovery: drivers, feedbacks and emergent constraints, with explainability, causality and uncertainty quantification
- Reconciling lines of evidence across methods, compartments and gases
- Monitoring for policy and industry: MRV, national inventories, carbon markets, CDR verification
- ML-based decision support and policy pathways (reinforcement learning, integrated assessment models)
- Benchmarks, datasets & open tools

The accelerating growth of atmospheric CO2, CH4, and N2O poses major threats to the Earth system and climate, having moved the world closer to breaching international climate targets, such as the Paris Agreement and the Global Methane Pledge. In recent years, evidence is accumulating that warming is driving increased greenhouse gas emissions from natural systems. This emission-driven warming will likely continue and intensify due to climate feedback mechanisms. These biogeochemical feedbacks involve not only well-known processes in the atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere, but also land-based systems such as permafrost, boreal–tropical forests, dynamic vegetation, wetlands, fire, and inland waters, many of which are tightly linked to one another. However, large uncertainties remain in the quantification of these processes for both warming-induced emissions and the associated temperature implications. Understanding these underlying mechanisms will help us address our remaining questions, such as: 1) Which feedback processes are most relevant for mitigation strategy planning (e.g., via the Transient Climate Response to cumulative Emissions of carbon dioxide (TCRE) or non-CO2 contributions to carbon budgets)? 2) What drives nonlinearity in the future climate trajectories? 3) Is the future climate (ir)reversible? 4) When will the climate be irreversible? 5) How will the climate respond to “overshoot, peak, and decline” scenarios? 6) What are the associated uncertainties across regional to global scales?

This session aims to gather and integrate work that tackles the impacts of warming-induced emissions on the Earth system and the mechanisms underlying them, thereby providing clearer guidance for sustaining human society within the remaining carbon budget. All community efforts (e.g., WIEMIP) toward these goals are strongly encouraged. We welcome all contributions spanning laboratory-based experiments, satellite and field observations, machine-learning emulators, and modeling approaches, including fully-coupled Earth system models and stand-alone models.

Land surface processes play a crucial role in shaping Earth's climate system, mediating land-atmosphere interactions, and driving terrestrial water-carbon-energy feedbacks. Land Surface Models, as core components of Earth System Models (ESMs), influence climate projections in benchmarks such as the CMIP7. However, land hydrology and its interactions with other components of the Earth system (e.g. biosphere, biogeochemical cycles) remain poorly represented in most ESMs, potentially inducing erroneous responses to anthropogenic climate forcings at global to local scales and leading to misrepresentations of droughts and floods. For instance, ESMs do not represent the observed decline of groundwater levels in water-limited regions that threatens groundwater-dependent ecosystems and exacerbates drought persistence, thereby increasing the risk of ecosystem shifts and progressive desertification. This crosscutting session provides an open, interdisciplinary platform to bridge the gap between hydrologists, hydrogeologists, ecohydrologists, and climate modelers.

We invite observational, theoretical, and numerical modeling contributions that advance the integrated representation of hydrological, hydrogeological, biophysical, and ecosystem processes within land surface models across spatial and temporal scales. Key areas of focus include the representation of the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, plant hydraulics, vegetation stress dynamics, and biosphere-mediated moisture recycling, alongside subsurface hydrogeology such as explicit groundwater-table dynamics, lateral flow, and deep aquifer linkages. Contributions addressing human-water-ecosystem interlinkages (e.g., groundwater abstraction, irrigation, land-use change), high-resolution ESM configurations, advanced observational networks, and emerging AI/machine learning techniques are also strongly encouraged.

The overarching aim of this session is to overcome historical disciplinary silos and establish a shared agenda across modeling communities. By aligning interdisciplinary priorities, addressing cross-scale parameterization challenges, and improving the evaluation of land-based mitigation and adaptation strategies, this session seeks to define future needs and collaborative opportunities for the next ESM generation.

Imaging the Earth’s surface and reconstructing its topography to study the landscape and (sub-)surface processes have advanced rapidly over the past two decades, sometimes separately within different geoscientific disciplines. Developments in satellite, airborne, uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV), and ground-based sensing, alongside advances in photogrammetry, Structure-from-Motion (SfM), LiDAR, computer vision, and automated processing, have transformed our ability to reconstruct and monitor the Earth’s surface in 2D, 3D, and 4D (time series).
The spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions of current measurements offer the opportunity to study the surface evolution from local to regional scale at unprecedented detail. Equipped with optimized workflows, either digitizing analogue data, such as historical aerial photographs, or processing near-continuous records of topographic change, geoscientists now have a variety of tools to better understand our rapidly changing environment and disentangle anthropogenic from natural drivers.
Yet, challenges still exist at both methodological and application levels. How can reliable data be acquired in harsh, remote, or non-ideal environments? How can observations from different time periods, scales, and platforms be reconstructed, co-registered, and compared? How should measurement precision, systematic errors, and uncertainty be quantified and propagated into estimates of surface change? And how can computer-vision, machine-learning, and automation extract meaningful information from large and complex 3D and 4D datasets?
In this session, we invite contributions from across the geosciences (e.g., geomorphology, glaciology, volcanology, hydrology, soil sciences) on the opportunities, limitations, and challenges of surface imaging, topographic reconstruction, and change analysis across diverse environments.
We especially welcome contributions addressing (1) novel data acquisition in complex, remote, or rapidly changing environments; (2) image and point-cloud processing, including image matching, reconstruction, co-registration, and correction of sensor distortions; (3) precision and uncertainty assessment, including systematic errors; (4) construction and analysis of multitemporal and 4D datasets, from historical records to high-frequency and near-continuous observations; (5) automated processing, analysis, and information extraction from large and complex datasets; and (6) innovative applications in geosciences.

This session will focus on Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies that aim increase alkalinity along the land-to-ocean aquatic continuum. This includes addition to alkalinity to rivers (river alkalinity enhancement (RAE) or inland water alkalinity enhancement (IWAE) that sit at the intersection of two more established CDR pathways, terrestrial enhanced weathering (ERW) and ocean alkalinity enhancement. RAE/IWAE projects aim to achieve net removal of atmospheric CO₂ through accelerated mineral weathering and increased riverine alkalinity export to long-term ocean storage. but raises a distinct set of scientific and practical questions tied to the hydrology, biogeochemistry, and ecology of flowing and standing inland waters and estuaries.
This session invites contributions spanning the full pipeline from fundamental science to deployment, including:
• Safety and ecological risk thresholds for water quality and freshwater biota (fish, benthic invertebrates, periphyton) under alkalinity dosing,
• Scaling potential and site-selection criteria across river systems, lakes, and reservoirs,
• Cost and feedstock considerations for geochemical CDR at inland-water scale,
• Measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) protocols, including direct field quantification and handling of CO₂ evasion at hydraulically complex sites (steps, falls, riffles),
• Ecological co-benefits, including interactions with freshwater acidification remediation,
• Case studies from active or pilot RAE/IWAE projects,
• Laboratory and mesocosm experiments isolating dissolution kinetics, evasion dynamics, and ecological response,
• Modelling of CDR potential, biogeochemical fate, and downstream/ocean carbon transport, and
• aqueous monitoring of terrestrially derived weathering products from ERW.
We welcome theoretical, observational, experimental, and modelling contributions, and particularly encourage early-career researchers and those working across disciplinary boundaries (hydrology, biogeochemistry, ecotoxicology, engineering).

Urban forests and green infrastructure are increasingly recognized as key components of climate-resilient and low-carbon cities. Through carbon sequestration and storage, regulation of surface energy and water exchanges, shading and evapotranspiration, urban vegetation can contribute simultaneously to climate change mitigation and adaptation, while also providing important benefits for human health and well-being. However, the magnitude and persistence of these benefits depend on complex interactions among vegetation structure and functioning, climate, urban morphology, land-use dynamics and management practices.
This session aims to advance understanding of the role of urban forests and vegetation in regulating carbon dynamics and urban microclimate, bringing together observational, modelling and remote-sensing perspectives across spatial and temporal scales. We welcome contributions addressing carbon uptake, storage and greenhouse-gas balances of urban vegetation; vegetation–atmosphere exchanges; evapotranspiration and cooling processes; urban heat-island mitigation; tree responses to heat, drought and other climatic extremes; and interactions between carbon sequestration, water use and cooling benefits.
The session also welcomes studies exploring how urban expansion, land-use change, vegetation configuration and management influence the long-term mitigation and adaptation potential of urban forests, as well as approaches integrating Earth Observation, in-situ monitoring, process-based modelling, machine learning and digital twins to assess present and future urban vegetation dynamics.
By connecting carbon-cycle science, urban climatology, ecophysiology, Earth Observation and in-situ observations, and urban planning, the session seeks to improve our capacity to quantify the multiple climate, environmental and societal benefits of urban forests and to identify strategies for designing and managing greener, healthier, more resilient and climate-neutral cities.

Cities are intricate multi-scale systems, composed of diverse sub-components such as population, energy, transport, and climate. These components interact on various time scales, from hourly to seasonal to annual and beyond. Effective urban models and digital twins, crucial for urban planning and policy-making, must account for these complex interactions as they govern the growth and functioning of cities, often giving rise to emergent large-scale phenomena. However, our ability to quantitatively describe city behaviour remains limited due to the myriad of processes, scales, and feedbacks involved.

This session invites studies focused on modelling and monitoring the dynamics of multiple sectors and city-biosphere interactions. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Demography
- Urban transport networks
- Energy consumption
- Anthropogenic emissions and pollution
- Urban climate
- Urban hydrology
- Urban ecology

Our aim is to elucidate the complex dynamics within urban environments and explore how urban form and function can be optimised to enhance the liveability and well-being of their citizens.

Achieving the climate goals of the Paris Agreement requires deep greenhouse gas emissions reductions towards a net-zero world and beyond. Advancements in mitigation-relevant science continuously inform the strategies and measures that society could pursue to achieve this goal. This session aims to further our understanding of the science surrounding the pursuit of the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal, including carbon budgets, zero emissions commitment, carbon dioxide removal strategies, and their policy implications. We will explore global to regional climate dynamics under net-zero, and peak and decline CO2 pathways, and mechanisms of committed or irreversible changes, including the risk of non-linear Earth system change.

We welcome both theoretical, empirical and modelling studies exploring all aspects of climate change in response to ambitious mitigation scenarios, including overshoot pathways through scenarios that pursue net negative emissions and a reversal of global warming. In addition to studies exploring the remaining carbon budget and the transient climate response to cumulative emissions of CO2 (TCRE), we welcome contributions on the zero emissions commitment (ZEC), effects of different forcings and feedbacks (e.g. permafrost carbon feedback), non-CO2 contributions to stringent climate change mitigation (e.g. non-CO2 greenhouse gases, and aerosols), and climate and carbon-cycle effects of carbon removal strategies, including their implications for policy. We also invite analysis focusing on consequences in a wide range of Earth System components and sectors, from ocean dynamics to the cryosphere, biodiversity and biosphere changes to human systems and economic consequences of overshoot, as well as the implications of overshoots for climate change adaptation planning.

We invite contributions that use a variety of tools, including fully coupled Earth System Models (ESMs), sectoral impact models, Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), or Simple Climate Models (SCMs) and climate emulators. Interdisciplinary contributions from the fields of climate policy and economics focused on applications of carbon budgets, net-zero pathways, and their wider implications are also encouraged.

The radioactive materials are known as polluting materials that are hazardous for human society, but are also ideal markers in understanding dynamics and physical/chemical/biological reactions chains in the environment. Therefore, man-made radioactive contamination involves regional and global transport and local reactions of radioactive materials through atmosphere, soil and water system, ocean, and organic ecosystem, and its relations with human and non-human biota. The topic also involves hazard prediction, risk assessment, nowcast, and countermeasures, which is now urgent important for the nuclear power plants in Ukraine, the Middle East, etc.

By combining long monitoring data (> halftime of Cesium 137 after the Chornobyl Accident in 1986, 16 years after the Fukushima Accident in 2011, and other events), we can improve our knowledgebase on the environmental behavior of radioactive materials and its environmental/biological impact. This should lead to improved monitoring systems in the future including emergency response systems, acute sampling/measurement methodology, and remediation schemes for any future nuclear accidents. Furthermore, the discharge of ALPS-treated water into the ocean, carried out as part of the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, has attracted international attention and demonstrated that decommissioning a nuclear power plant that has suffered an accident requires a fundamentally different approach from that of a conventional decommissioning. Studies on past nuclear contamination events and other environmental radioactivity datasets are also welcome.

The following specific topics have traditionally been discussed:
(a) Atmospheric Science (emissions, transport, deposition, pollution);
(b) Hydrology (transport in surface and ground water system, soil-water interactions);
(c) Oceanology (transport, bio-system interaction);
(d) Soil System (transport, chemical interaction, transfer to organic system);
(e) Forestry;
(f) Natural Hazards (warning systems, health risk assessments, geophysical variability);
(g) Measurement Techniques (instrumentation, multipoint data measurements);
(h) Ecosystems (migration/decay of radionuclides).

Land–atmosphere interactions often play a decisive role in shaping climate extremes. As climate change continues to exacerbate the occurrence of extreme events, a key challenge is to unravel how land states regulate the occurrence of droughts, heatwaves, intense precipitation and other extreme events. This session focuses on how natural and managed land surface conditions (e.g., soil moisture, soil temperature, vegetation state, surface albedo, snow or frozen soil) interact with other components of the climate system – via water, heat and carbon exchanges – and how these interactions affect the state and evolution of the atmospheric boundary layer. Moreover, emphasis is placed on the role of these interactions in alleviating or aggravating the occurrence and impacts of extreme events. We welcome studies using field measurements, remote sensing observations, theory and modelling to analyse this interplay under past, present and/or future climates and at scales ranging from local to global but with emphasis on larger scales.

In recent years, technologies based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as image processing, smart sensors, and intelligent inversion, have garnered significant attention from researchers in the geosciences community. These technologies offer the promise of transitioning geosciences from qualitative to quantitative analysis, unlocking new insights and capabilities previously thought unattainable.
One of the key reasons for the growing popularity of AI in geosciences is its unparalleled ability to efficiently analyze vast datasets within remarkably short timeframes. This capability empowers scientists and researchers to tackle some of the most intricate and challenging issues in fields like Geophysics, Seismology, Hydrology, Planetary Science, Remote Sensing, and Disaster Risk Reduction.
As we stand on the cusp of a new era in geosciences, the integration of artificial intelligence promises to deliver more accurate estimations, efficient predictions, and innovative solutions. By leveraging algorithms and machine learning, AI empowers geoscientists to uncover intricate patterns and relationships within complex data sources, ultimately advancing our understanding of the Earth's dynamic systems. In essence, artificial intelligence has become an indispensable tool in the pursuit of quantitative precision and deeper insights in the fascinating world of geosciences.
For this reason, aim of this session is to explore new advances and approaches of AI in Geosciences.

The Quaternary Period (the last 2.6 million years) is characterized by frequent and abrupt climate swings and rapid environmental change. Studying these changes requires accurate, precise dating methods that can be applied effectively to environmental archives. Different methods or a combination of various dating techniques can be used depending on the archive, time range, and research question. Varve counting and dendrochronology allow for the construction of high-resolution chronologies. In contrast, radiometric methods (radiocarbon, cosmogenic in-situ, U-Th, and even Pb-210 for the Anthropocene), luminescence dating, and electron spin resonance dating provide independent anchors for chronologies that span longer timescales. We particularly welcome contributions that aim to (1) reduce, quantify, and express dating uncertainties in any dating method, including high-resolution radiocarbon approaches; (2) use established geochronological methods to answer new questions; (3) use new methods including recognizing and critically examine their limitations to address longstanding issues, or; (4) combine different chronometric techniques for improved results, including the analysis of chronological datasets with novel methods, e.g., Bayesian age-depth modeling; (5) we also welcome contributions integrating multiple chronological and provenance tools including U-Pb geochronology and apatite fission track thermochronology to constrain sediment provenance and source to sink dynamics. Applications may aim to understand long-term landscape evolution, quantify rates of geomorphological processes, or provide chronologies for records of climate change and anthropogenic effects on Earth's system.

Time series are a common type of data generated by observational and modelling efforts across Earth, environmental and space sciences. Long-term observations are particularly important for understanding gradual changes and assessing risks, yet are often difficult to sustain and fund. Their characteristics can vary substantially, from short to long records, linear to nonlinear dynamics, univariate to multivariate data, and single- to multi-scale variability. These differences call for both tailored methodologies and general approaches.

A key challenge is distinguishing random fluctuations from long-term changes in order to better understand processes within and across Earth system components. This requires knowledge of temporal variability and, often, sufficiently long observations. For example, reliable sea-level trends may require several decades of continuous measurements because of decadal variability. Likewise, the stochastic variability of geophysical time series can exhibit power-law scaling, requiring long records for robust statistical assessment.

Time series analysis encompasses a broad range of tasks, including:
- characterizing nonlinear variability in the time and/or frequency domain;
- quantifying complexity, predictability and scaling properties;
- identifying statistical interdependencies within and between time series;
- distinguishing co-variability from causal relationships;
- reducing dimensionality and identifying meaningful modes of variability; and
- developing stochastic and deterministic statistical or dynamical models.

This session invites contributions on the development and application of modern methods for analysing observational and model time series across the EGU community, including geophysical, geodynamic, oceanographic, geodetic and climate observations from terrestrial observatories and remote sensing. Contributions addressing advances in sensors, instrumentation, monitoring, analysis and interpretation, as well as comparisons of different approaches, are welcome. Studies using novel methods, including AI, for the analysis of long time series are particularly encouraged. We aim to foster interdisciplinary exchange and cross-fertilization between different EGU divisions.

Plant hydraulics, which studies the capacity of plants to extract water from the soil and transport it up to the aerial organs, and ecohydrology, which studies the bidirectional interaction between the water cycle and ecosystems, share substantial conceptual overlap. Yet, communication between the two research communities remains limited.
This session aims to bridge this gap by soliciting contributions that present case studies that have benefited, or could benefit, from an interdisciplinary approach. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:
• Ecohydrological processes in complex landscapes, including ecological studies at sites with significant lateral water fluxes, groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and landscape evolution contexts
• Vegetation-water interactions under environmental change, encompassing drought studies and forest hydrological research in both urban and natural catchments
• Plant hydraulic traits and ecosystem functioning, focusing on the ecohydrological implications of plant hydraulic strategies across scales
• Linking plant and catchment water dynamics through observations and modelling, including the use of isotopes and other novel measurement techniques, scaling approaches and integration of plant hydraulics into ecohydrological models
To facilitate meaningful exchange between the communities, contributors are encouraged to explicitly highlight the realised or anticipated benefits of integrating concepts, methods, or perspectives from the complementary discipline, for example through advances in theory, improved interpretation of observations, or the development of modelling approaches.

The Critical Zone (CZ) encompasses natural and anthropogenic environments where air, water, soil and rock interact with ecosystems and society. Water connects these components through the transfer of matter and energy across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Although groundwater is a major reservoir within this integrated system, its role in linking surface and subsurface processes and in shaping the evolution of the CZ remains incompletely understood. The slow and heterogeneous dynamics of groundwater in particular make it challenging to identify how processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales interact and respond to environmental change.

This session welcomes contributions exploring groundwater processes and their interactions with other CZ components, from local to regional scales and from short-term dynamics to long-term evolution. We encourage observational, experimental and modelling studies, as well as approaches combining these perspectives, including data-driven methods and insights from long-term observatories. Contributions may address natural processes, interactions within ecosystems, or anthropogenic influences, including the effects of climate and land use change on groundwater and CZ dynamics.

Topics may include, but are not limited to: groundwater–surface water interactions and hyporheic processes; recharge, evapotranspiration and root-zone dynamics; groundwater-dependent ecosystems; weathering, solute and contaminant transport; mining-impacted and other human-modified systems; cold-region, coastal, karst and crystalline aquifers; and the use of tracers, isotopes and geophysics to constrain CZ processes.

By connecting processes, observations and models, this session aims to foster a more integrated understanding of groundwater within the CZ. We particularly welcome studies that bridge disciplines and scales, and we strongly encourage early-career researchers to submit their work.

Hydrology and soil science originated from water-management needs for ancient civilisation and agriculture, but since then have developed into many specialised disciplines. While irrigation and yield management remain prominent research topics, agricultural fields as soil-plant-atmosphere systems are rarely seen as an integrated hydrological system, despite the pressing challenges posed by intensifying climatic extremes, degrading soils and declining water resources.
This session therefore refocuses attention on agricultural fields as coupled soil-plant-atmosphere systems in which hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological processes interact. Interdisciplinary approaches are crucial to improve process understanding for enhancing agricultural practices and making agricultural landscapes more resilient.
Given the contrasting temporal and spatial legacies of the processes involved, we need to consider agricultural landscapes under change. How can we prospectively manage systems with different process turnover scales? Moreover, which system-stabilising processes exist to make the landscapes more resilient, not only through “isolated” measures such as retention basins or hedges, but by enhancing characteristics and properties across entire fields or landscapes (e.g. improving soil structure to increase infiltration capacities)?

We invite contributions investigating soil-plant-atmosphere interactions, water, carbon and nutrient cycling, crop responses to environmental stress, and other processes shaping agricultural landscapes across temporal and spatial scales.
We particularly encourage contributions addressing how fundamental process understanding can inform agricultural management practices and modelling approaches. It is important to us to strengthen the connection between different scales – for example, linking small-scale and/or short-term observations and large-scale and/or long-term system responses, and translating them into management strategies/practices and applications.

This session aims to foster exchange between fundamental and applied research, and discussion about transforming interdisciplinary collaboration to impactful solution prospects.

The Critical Zone (CZ), encompassing the Earth's surface from the top of the vegetation canopy to the bottom of the circulating groundwater, is essential for sustaining life and maintaining environmental health. Understanding this region of complex intersections within the natural world, and between the environment and society, requires a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach that transcends disciplinary and national boundaries, bridging gaps between short-term and long-term environmental processes. This session will highlight CZ science, CZ methodologies, and the collaborative efforts of CZ research sites and networks from around the world. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Innovative techniques in CZ research and monitoring, such as integrated observation and modeling approaches or hybrid methods; Advances in understanding soils, hydrology, and biogeochemical cycling within the CZ; Intersections of society and the CZ; Policy or management implications of CZ research; Development of CZ science networks; And case studies of successful national and international CZ collaborations.

Running Earth system models, downscaling outputs and driving process-based impact models are computationally expensive tasks that hinder the exploration of climate change impacts. New generations of statistical, physical, and hybrid climate change emulators reduce these bottlenecks by mimicking global, regional and extreme-event responses to generate projections of climate change and its associated impacts more efficiently. This capability transforms the assessment of climate change impacts and risks by enabling rapid policy-relevant analyses for sectors such as natural systems, agriculture, water resources, economics, energy systems and human health.

This session invites contributions on the developments and applications in climate change emulation, highlighting opportunities and challenges for robust and computationally efficient climate risk assessments. This includes simple climate models, probabilistic emulation techniques and machine learning approaches, including traditional pattern scaling, as well as benchmarking efforts that aid in interpretability and consistency between emulation methods. To foster interdisciplinary exchange, we also encourage submissions regarding approaches for climate impact projections.

Climate change and urbanisation increase climate risks and the negative consequences of extreme events. For instance, floods cost billions of euros of losses and result in thousands of fatalities every year. Accelerated adaptation by societies, including governments, insurance companies, households and others is urgently required. However, there are limits to the adaptability of societies. For instance, social vulnerability factors (e.g. income, education, etc.) may reduce households’ adaptation efforts. When societies stop implementing additional adaptation, risk may become ‘intolerable’, and adaptation limits may be reached. At such point, people may have to migrate to safer locations. However, very little is known about the extent to which societies can adapt, which factors drive these limits, and where and when limits to adaptation will be reached.
This session welcomes abstracts considering how to conceptualise, assess, project and avoid adaptation limits. The session aims to facilitate discussions and cooperation about interdisciplinary research on adaptation and its limits by bringing together experts in climate, natural hazards and the social sciences.
Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:
• Where were soft or hard limits of adaptation reached already?
• Which social and physical vulnerability constraints can lead to adaptation limits?
• How to conceptualise and measure intolerable risk
• Motivation for and hindrances of adaptation efforts
• Simulation of adaptation and migration decisions
• Quantification of adaptation effects

Urban areas increasingly face interconnected challenges from heat, flooding, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem degradation, intensified by climate change and rapid urbanization. Green infrastructure and nature-based solutions can address these challenges by regulating urban temperatures, managing stormwater, providing habitats to species, and supporting ecosystem services. However, their effectiveness depends on vegetation characteristics, spatial configuration, environmental conditions, and interactions among ecological, hydrological, and climatic processes.
This session invites contributions that use quantitative frameworks to assess, predict, and optimize the benefits and trade-offs of green adaptation.

Contributions may address:
1. Modelling interactions among urban heat, flooding, biodiversity, and ecosystem processes under different green adaptation scenarios.
2. Computational modelling, machine learning, remote sensing, field observations, and data-driven approaches for hazard prediction and resilience assessment.
3. Effects of vegetation characteristics and spatial configuration on microclimate regulation, runoff reduction, habitat quality, and ecosystem functioning.
4. Synergies, trade-offs, uncertainties, and unintended consequences associated with green adaptation.
5. Planning, optimization, and spatial prioritization of nature-based solutions under climatic, ecological, social, and economic constraints.
6. Comparative studies across cities, climate zones, ecological settings, and adaptation strategies.
7. Social, governance, and equity dimensions, including the distribution of adaptation benefits and residual risks among communities.
By bridging urban climate science, hydrology, ecology, and computational innovation, this session will advance understanding of how nature-based solutions can support multifunctional, equitable, and climate-resilient cities under global change.

This session explores how assured, trustworthy use of AI for geospatial data can support decision-making and implementation strategies. The use of AI-enabled geospatial tools is increasing, spanning site suitability, climate resilience, risk management and investment decisions. Across all of these applications, questions of data provenance, model assurance, confidence levels and uncertainty analysis of the AI systems themselves become critical to responsible deployment.

We invite contributions on: methods for validating geospatial AI models and the datasets used; approaches to closing evidence gaps in data-poor areas; and frameworks to measure confidence and uncertainty in AI-derived geospatial outputs. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions, including case studies that demonstrate how responsible GeoAI approaches can support fair access and devolution.

Mountain regions are changing rapidly as climate warming, cryosphere loss, hydrological and ecosystem change, and socio-economic transformations interact. Looking toward 2050 provides a shared near-term horizon for asking how mountain social-ecological systems may evolve, which risks and opportunities may emerge, and how knowledge about possible futures can inform decisions today. The session addresses key and emerging themes in mountain research while remaining open to contributions from across the wider mountain research community.
A cross-cutting focus is on interactions between environmental and socio-economic change in mountain regions, including their implications for hazards, vulnerability, exposure and risk. We welcome conceptual and empirical research using observations, monitoring networks, remote sensing, models, scenarios, storylines and comparative studies to understand current trajectories and explore possible mountain futures. Contributions may address physical, ecological and societal dimensions of mountain change, from climate, cryosphere, water, ecosystems and hazards to land use, economies and governance, including mountain-lowland linkages.
We particularly encourage work that connects long-term observations with future scenarios and decision-making, investigates interactions and feedbacks between biophysical and human systems, or co-produces knowledge with communities, practitioners and decision-makers. Contributions that advance integrated approaches to monitoring, risk and adaptation, governance and the translation of knowledge into action are particularly welcome. By bringing these strands together, the session aims to clarify what different mountain futures could mean by 2050 and how choices made today may shape risks, resilience and sustainable development.
This session is endorsed and supported by the Mountain Research Initiative and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

The Antarctic continent contains approximately 10% of Earth's least understood continental crust, much of it hidden beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Yet this concealed lithosphere exerts a fundamental influence on geothermal heat flow, subglacial hydrology, sediment and nutrient fluxes, ice-sheet behaviour, ocean productivity, and climate feedbacks. Understanding Antarctica therefore requires a truly interdisciplinary perspective that links solid Earth processes with the cryosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere. This session provides a forum for the newly approved SCAR Scientific Research Programme Antarctic Geosphere Evolution (AGE), which aims to advance understanding of Antarctica's four-dimensional lithospheric evolution and its interactions with Earth-system processes. We welcome contributions spanning geological, geophysical, geochemical, biological and modelling approaches, particularly studies that bridge traditional disciplinary boundaries. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Antarctic lithospheric architecture and tectonic evolution
• Geodynamics, mantle structure and geothermal heat flow
• Lithosphere-cryosphere coupling and ice-sheet dynamics
• Subglacial hydrology and groundwater systems
• Sediment, dust and nutrient fluxes from Antarctica to the Southern Ocean
• Provenance studies and reconstruction of the hidden Antarctic continent
• Interactions between geological processes, marine productivity and biogeochemical cycles
• Integration of geological, geophysical and geochemical datasets
• Integration of Antarctica’s components in full-plate reconstructions and computational tectonics.
The session particularly encourages studies that develop new connections between disciplines and improve understanding of how Antarctica's lithosphere influences the wider Earth system across spatial and temporal scales.

Landscapes are shaped by geomorphic processes, but life also shapes landscapes. Interactions and feedbacks between organisms, ecosystems and geomorphic processes structure many dynamic environments, including rivers, coasts, hillslopes, aeolian and deglaciating landscapes. Yet, many biogeomorphic feedbacks remain poorly understood and quantified, in particular their mechanisms, strength and thresholds. As these landscapes are increasingly affected by climate and land-use change, understanding how biota influence geomorphic processes—and vice versa—is becoming increasingly important. Improved understanding can support nature-based solutions (NbS) and geoheritage conservation and contribute to the conservation of geodiversity and biodiversity, as well as the maintenance of ecosystem functions and services.

Our session brings together research on interactions between plants, animals, ecosystem processes and geomorphic processes, landforms and materials. We particularly seek to connect researchers working in environment-specific communities, including fluvial, coastal, aeolian and hillslope geomorphology, and provide a forum to explore common biogeomorphic processes and feedbacks across environments. We welcome research spanning functional traits and individual organisms to ecosystems and landscapes, from mountain environments to the sea. By bringing together studies from different environmental settings, we aim to identify common principles, context-dependent contrasts and transferable insights in biogeomorphology, and foster synergies between research communities.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• biogeomorphic processes, rates and feedbacks;
• the role of plant and other organisms’ traits in geomorphic processes;
• biota as ecosystem engineers, landform creators and landscape shapers;
• biogeomorphic feedbacks under climate and land-use change;
• applications of biogeomorphology for nature-based solutions, hazard mitigation and geoheritage conservation

Innovative approaches—including field monitoring, laboratory and flume experiments, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, numerical and statistical modelling, and combinations thereof—are warmly welcomed, especially when providing new insights into interactions between life and landscape, resolving previously inaccessible interactions or pushing scalar boundaries.