Continental Margins as Dynamic Interfaces: Source-to-Sink Transfers, Biogeochemical Cycling and Biodiversity Responses

Continental margins are among the most active interfaces of the Earth system, where terrestrial, oceanic, atmospheric, and human signals converge and are recorded in sedimentary archives. Inputs from rivers, atmospheric deposition, ocean circulation, and human activity are transported across the shelf, slope, and deep sea, transformed by physical and biogeochemical processes, and ultimately stored in marine sediments. The coupling between sediment dynamics, elemental cycling, and biological communities controls carbon sequestration, nutrient supply, and habitat structure along these gradients. Climate variability and intensifying anthropogenic pressure are now reshaping sediment fluxes, organic matter composition, and ecosystem functioning, making an integrated, source-to-sink view of margin systems a pressing scientific priority.Despite major advances within sedimentology, geochemistry, physical oceanography, and benthic ecology, research on continental margins remains largely compartmentalized. We still lack a quantitative understanding of how physical transport, geochemical transformation, and biological response interact across the shelf-to-deep-sea continuum, and how these interactions are being modified by global change. The combined impact of warming, deoxygenation, altered river loads, fishing, mining, and coastal development on margin biogeochemistry and biodiversity is particularly poorly constrained. This Research Topic aims to bridge these gaps by bringing together interdisciplinary contributions that link modern process studies, sedimentary records, and modeling to advance a unified framework for material transfers, biogeochemical cycling, and ecological change along continental margins.We welcome studies that address physical, biogeochemical, and ecological processes from the shelf to the deep sea, with an emphasis on cross-disciplinary integration. Themes of interest include, but are not limited to:Land–ocean material fluxes and sediment source-to-sink transfersSediment transport, deposition, and the dynamics of margin depocentersSources, transformation, and burial of organic matterNutrient cycling and benthic–pelagic couplingShelf–slope exchange and deep-sea habitat functioningBiodiversity and ecosystem responses to climate variability and human pressureMultiproxy paleoenvironmental reconstructions of margin evolutionModeling and observational frameworks linking processes across spatial and temporal scalesRegional case studies, comparative analyses, and syntheses spanning contemporary to paleoenvironmental timescales are strongly encouraged. We invite Original Research, Review, Mini Review, Systematic Review, Methods, and Perspective articles that advance an integrated understanding of continental margins as dynamic interfaces of the Earth system. Topic editors: Felipe Rodrigues Dos Santos, Ana Lúcia Lindroth Dauner Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81438/continental-margins-as-dynamic-interfaces-source-to-sink-transfers-biogeochemical-cycling-and-biodiversity-responses