Aims and Scope for the Workshop

The workshop welcomes contributions spanning fundamental process understanding and applied research, bringing together perspectives from hydrology, biogeochemistry, soil science, plant science, ecology, modelling, and environmental management.

Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding the factors that control phosphorus mobilisation, retention, and transport, including their variability across environmental conditions, landscape positions, and ecosystem boundaries. The workshop will also consider how this understanding can inform more effective mitigation and how technical, economic, and institutional barriers to implementation can be overcome. Carbon cycling will not be a central theme, although relevant interactions may be considered where necessary to understand phosphorus dynamics.

The workshop will bring together researchers working across disciplines and scales, including:

• Hydrology:
  Flow paths, hydrological connectivity, residence times, and hydrological controls on phosphorus transport.

• Biogeochemistry:
  Iron–phosphorus interactions, redox processes, sediment–water interfaces, and wetland biogeochemistry.

• Soil science:
  Phosphorus mobilisation, legacy phosphorus, soil test phosphorus, and the effects of land management on phosphorus loss risk.

• Plant science and ecology:
  Root processes, rhizosphere dynamics, and the roles of wetland and riparian vegetation in phosphorus cycling.

• Modelling:
  Conceptual, numerical, and data-driven approaches to predicting phosphorus transport, retention, and losses.

• Applied science and management:
  Practical mitigation measures, their effectiveness, and the technical, economic, and institutional barriers to implementation.

A particular focus will be the context dependency and non-linearity of phosphorus transport, including the role of iron–phosphorus interactions and plant-mediated processes along upland–riparian–aquatic continua. The workshop will address both fundamental process understanding and its translation into effective management. Carbon cycling will not be a central theme, although relevant interactions may be considered where necessary to understand phosphorus dynamics.

Contributions addressing the following questions, among others, are particularly welcome:

• Under which hydrological and biogeochemical conditions does iron act as a sink, gate, or source of phosphorus, and how do plants modulate these dynamics across redox interfaces?
• Which monitoring approaches best capture phosphorus transport and its drivers across the spatial and temporal scales relevant to management?
• How can models better integrate monitoring data and mechanistic understanding, including interactions among iron, plants, and phosphorus, to improve predictions of phosphorus transport and losses?
• Which mitigation measures are most effective under different landscape and environmental conditions, and what technical, economic, and institutional barriers prevent their wider implementation?
• How can phosphorus transport at the landscape scale be better conceptualised by integrating monitoring, mechanisms, modelling, and mitigation into a coherent framework?

The workshop will initiate a collaborative, multi-author overview paper synthesising current knowledge, identifying key knowledge gaps, and proposing an integrated framework for understanding and managing phosphorus transport across agricultural landscapes and ecosystem boundaries.

In addition, we plan to develop a Special Issue bringing together contributions from across the four thematic sessions, providing a broader platform for advancing research on phosphorus transport, its underlying mechanisms, and effective mitigation.

Researchers interested in contributing to the workshop, the collaborative synthesis, and/or the planned Special Issue are warmly invited to express their interest.