coastal benthic ecosystems

Coastal benthic ecosystems reveal the cumulative toll of climate and human pressures

Coastal benthic ecosystems are telling us something urgent. Rising temperatures, acidification, and deoxygenation now converge with eutrophication, pollution, and bottom trawling, reshaping biodiversity from shallow coasts to continental margins. These compounded stressors simplify assemblages, alter trophic pathways, and push ecosystems toward critical thresholds. Yet recent advances, environmental DNA metabarcoding, automated imaging, multi-stressor experiments, are sharpening our ability to detect and understand these changes at scale.