title: Human activities and climate variability drive fast-paced change across the world's estuarine-coastal ecosystems.
abstract: Time series of environmental measurements are essential for detecting, measuring and understanding changes in the Earth system and its biological communities. Observational series have accumulated over the past 2-5 decades from measurements across the world's estuaries, bays, lagoons, inland seas and shelf waters influenced by runoff. We synthesize information contained in these time series to develop a global view of changes occurring in marine systems influenced by connectivity to land. Our review is organized around four themes: (i) human activities as drivers of change; (ii) variability of the climate system as a driver of change; (iii) successes, disappointments and challenges of managing change at the sea-land interface; and (iv) discoveries made from observations over time. Multidecadal time series reveal that many of the world's estuarine-coastal ecosystems are in a continuing state of change, and the pace of change is faster than we could have imagined a decade ago. Some have been transformed into novel ecosystems with habitats, biogeochemistry and biological communities outside the natural range of variability. Change takes many forms including linear and nonlinear trends, abrupt state changes and oscillations. The challenge of managing change is daunting in the coastal zone where diverse human pressures are concentrated and intersect with different responses to climate variability over land and over ocean basins. The pace of change in estuarine-coastal ecosystems will likely accelerate as the human population and economies continue to grow and as global climate change accelerates. Wise stewardship of the resources upon which we depend is critically dependent upon a continuing flow of information from observations to measure, understand and anticipate future changes along the world's coastlines.
authors.affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey, 345 Middlefield Rd., Menlo Park, 94025, CA, USA.
authors.forename: James E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Cloern
authors.affiliation: Institute of Oceanography, Federal University of Rio Grande, Cx. P. 474, Rio Grande, RS 96201-900, Brazil.
authors.forename: Paulo C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Abreu
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Frederiksborgvej, 399, Denmark.
authors.forename: Jacob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Carstensen
authors.affiliation: Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer - Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Laboratoire des sciences de l'Environnement MARin, Rue Dumont d'Urville, 29280, Plouzanée, France.
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chauvaud
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences, Stockholm University, SE-10691, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Ragnar
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Elmgren
authors.affiliation: Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer - Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Observatoire MARin, Rue Dumont d'Urville, 29280, Plouzanée, France.
authors.forename: Jacques
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Grall
authors.affiliation: Tampa Bay Estuary Program, 263 13th Ave S., Suite 350, St. Petersburg, 33701, FL, USA.
authors.forename: Holly
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Greening
authors.affiliation: Janicki Environmental, Inc., 1155 Eden Isle Drive NE, St. Petersburg, 33704, FL, USA.
authors.forename: John Olov Roger
authors.initials: JO
authors.lastname: Johansson
authors.affiliation: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0218, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Mati
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kahru
authors.affiliation: Tampa Bay Estuary Program, 263 13th Ave S., Suite 350, St. Petersburg, 33701, FL, USA.
authors.forename: Edward T
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Sherwood
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 164 West Xingang Road, Guangzhou, 510301, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: School of Marine Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, 132 Wai Huan East Road, Guangzhou, 51006, China.
authors.forename: Kedong
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yin
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D063366:Estuaries; D006802:Human Activities; D006801:Humans
keywords: climate variability; ecosystems; environmental change; estuarine-coastal; global change; human disturbance