Microbial Foundations of Blue Carbon: Community Dynamics, Biogeochemical Pathways, and Ecosystem Resilience Across Coastal and Marine Habitats

Blue carbon ecosystems are among the planet’s most effective natural carbon sinks. These systems play central roles in global climate regulation by capturing and storing substantial amounts of organic carbon, much of it mediated by complex microbial processes. Within these habitats, microbial consortia drive the decomposition, transformation, and burial of organic matter, regulate greenhouse gas fluxes, and determine the stability and longevity of sedimentary carbon stocks. Despite their ecological and climatic importance, the microbial underpinnings of blue carbon cycling remain insufficiently understood, particularly in how environmental stressors, nutrient enrichment, pollution, and climate change alter microbial community structure and function. As coastal degradation accelerates worldwide, understanding the microbial processes sustaining blue carbon potential has become a fundamental challenge uniting microbial ecologists, biogeochemists, and conservation scientists.

This Research Topic aims to advance an integrated view of the microorganisms, genes, and metabolic networks underpinning blue carbon sequestration across marine and coastal ecosystems. We seek contributions that explore how microbial diversity, functional potential, and activity control carbon capture, storage, and remineralization under varying biotic and abiotic conditions. Studies investigating microbial mediation of methane, nitrous oxide, and dissolved organic carbon fluxes, or those linking microbial pathways to sediment chemistry, hydrodynamics, and plant–microbe symbioses, are especially encouraged. In addition, this Research Topic welcomes perspectives on how land-use changes, eutrophication, pollutants, or climate-driven disturbances such as heatwaves and sea-level rise modulate microbial roles in blue carbon ecosystems, as well as the development of novel monitoring and modelling tools to quantify microbial contributions to coastal carbon budgets.

To gather further insights into the microbial dimensions of blue carbon dynamics, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

- Microbial community composition, function, and metabolic networks in blue carbon ecosystems (mangroves, seagrasses, salt marshes, tidal flats)

- Coupling between microbial processes and carbon burial, degradation, and greenhouse gas fluxes

- Symbiotic and antagonistic interactions between plants, algae, and microbes regulating blue carbon storage

- Effects of anthropogenic stressors (nutrient loading, contaminants, aquaculture, land-use change) on microbial mediation of carbon cycling

- Comparative analyses of microbial carbon turnover across tropical, subtropical, and temperate ecosystems

- Microbial responses to ocean warming, acidification, and sea-level rise

- Integration of molecular techniques (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, metabolomics) with geochemical and ecological data

- Application of earth observation, machine learning, or biogeochemical modelling for predicting microbial carbon fluxes and blue carbon stability

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Blue carbon, Aquatic microbiome, Carbon sequestration, Biogeochemical cycling, Mangrove, seagrass, and salt marsh ecosystems, Microbial community dynamics, Greenhouse gas fluxes, Climate change impacts, Plant–microbe interactions, Metagenomics and omics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.