Ecosystem Functioning, Biodiversity Dynamics, and Resilience of Tropical Mangrove and Estuarine Ecosystems Under Environmental Change

Mangrove forests and estuaries sit at the interface of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments, where steep physical and chemical gradients create highly dynamic habitats. These systems sustain diverse communities and drive key ecological processes, including primary production, organic matter decomposition and export, nutrient cycling, sediment retention, and habitat connectivity, while delivering essential services such as shoreline stabilization, blue carbon storage, fisheries support, and biodiversity maintenance.Tropical coastal ecosystems are increasingly reshaped by interacting climate-driven and anthropogenic pressures: warming, sea-level rise, altered precipitation and freshwater input, salinity change, hydrological modification, habitat fragmentation, pollution, biological invasions, and coastal development. Together these stressors alter species distributions, community structure, ecosystem functioning, and long-term resilience. Advances in ecological monitoring, remote sensing, and ecosystem modeling have sharpened our understanding, yet major gaps remain in how environmental change propagates from populations and communities to whole-ecosystem function and resilience.This Research Topic advances understanding of the population, community, and ecosystem-level consequences of environmental change in tropical mangrove and estuarine systems. By bringing together studies across regions and disciplines, it seeks common patterns, mechanisms, and functional responses that can improve prediction of ecosystem behaviour and support evidence-based management, conservation, and restoration in a rapidly changing world.We welcome original research, reviews, and perspectives that clarify biodiversity dynamics, ecological processes, and ecosystem functioning in tropical mangrove and estuarine landscapes under environmental change.Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:o Climate-change impacts on tropical mangrove and estuarine ecosystem functioning;o Sea-level rise, hydrological alteration, and salinity gradients as drivers of community assembly;o Biodiversity and community responses to natural and anthropogenic disturbance;o Ecosystem functioning, stability, and resilience across coastal gradients;o Species interactions, trophic structure, and food-web dynamics;o Population and community dynamics under multiple interacting stressors;o Biological invasions and their ecosystem-level consequences;o Ecological effects of extreme climatic and hydrological events;o Remote sensing, long-term ecological monitoring, and ecosystem assessment;o Conservation planning and management informed by functional and community data.Studies using observational, experimental, modeling, and interdisciplinary approaches across tropical regions are strongly encouraged.Manuscripts whose primary contribution is a molecular or population-genetic method, marker development, or genetic stock assessment fall outside this collection and are better suited to complementary molecular-focused Research Topics. Here we prioritise population, community, and ecosystem-level outcomes; genetic or eDNA data are welcome only where they directly serve a biodiversity or ecosystem-function question. Topic editors: Diego Simeone, Valdemiro Muhala, Adam Silva Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83407/ecosystem-functioning-biodiversity-dynamics-and-resilience-of-tropical-mangrove-and-estuarine-ecosystems-under-environmental-change