As the focus of land-sea interactions, estuarine and coastal ecosystems perform numerous vital ecological service functions, although they are highly vulnerable to various kinds of disturbance, both directly and indirectly related to human activity, that have attracted much recent attention. Critical zone science (CZS) has emerged as a valuable conceptual framework that focuses on quantitative interactions between diverse components of the environment and is able to integrate anthropogenic disturbance with a view to predicting future trajectories of change. However, coastal and estuarine environments appear to have been overlooked in CZS and are notably under-represented, indeed not explicitly represented at all, in the global network of critical zone observatories (CZOs). Even in the wider network of environmental observatories globally, estuarine and coastal wetland ecosystems are only very rarely an explicit focus. Further strengthening of integrated research in coastal and estuarine environments is required, more especially given the threats these ecosystems face due to growing population at the coast and against the background of climate change and sea level rise. The establishment of one or more CZOs, or their functional equivalents, with a strong focus on estuarine and coastal wetlands, should be urgently attended to.

河口和沿海生态系统是陆地-海洋相互作用的焦点，尽管它们极易受到与人类活动直接或间接相关的各种干扰的影响，但它们却在许多方面已发挥了重要的生态服务功能，最近引起了人们的广泛关注。临界区科学（CZS）已经成为一种有价值的概念框架，其重点是环境的各个组成部分之间的定量相互作用，并且能够整合人为干扰，以预测未来的变化轨迹。但是，在关键区域天文台（CZO）的全球网络中，沿海和河口环境在CZS中似乎已被忽视，并且代表性不足，甚至根本没有明确地表示出来。即使在全球范围更广泛的环境观测站网络中，河口和沿海湿地生态系统很少是一个明确的重点。需要进一步加强沿海和河口环境的综合研究，尤其是考虑到这些生态系统由于沿海人口的增长以及气候变化和海平面上升的背景而面临的威胁。应紧急注意建立一个或多个以海洋学和沿海湿地为重点的CZO或其功能等同物。