Dramatically increased reactive nitrogen (N) inputs over the past decades caused numerous eco-environmental problems in coastal marine ecosystems (Wei et al., 2022;Wei et al., 2023). Estuarine and coastal ecosystems are not only critical zones connecting terrestrial and marine ecosystems, but also a hotpot for greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions and diverse N biogeochemical processes such as denitrification, anammox, and N burial in sediment (Figure 1). In estuarine and coastal ecosystems, N cycling is temporally and spatially complex and dynamically influenced by multiple interrelated ecosystem components (Liu et al., 2020;Murray et al., 2020). It is necessary to deepen our knowledge of N cycle in estuarine and coastal ecosystems (Tian et al., 2020;Harris et al., 2022). Within this aspect, this Research Topic focuses on spatiotemporal N variations, N fluxes, as well as their controlling factors and environmental implications. Sixteen articles were finally collected in this Research Topic as summarized below.Variations in natural forcing and environmental conditions affect spatiotemporal patterns of nitrogen cycle processes. Zhang et al. investigated the influence of the tidal cycle on total nitrogen (TN) and N speciation in a coastal bay. They reported that while TN concentrations during the spring and neap tides did not differ, significant differences in particulate nitrogen (PN) and NO 2 − were observed between the spring and neap tides.Furthermore, the net exchange flux of TN during spring tide was 4.3 times higher than that of neap tide. They also reported an above 50% contribution of the total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) pool in TN. Among TDN, dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) accounted for higher proportion during the spring tides compared to neap tides. Xu et al. show that both local and remote forcing, such as winds, upwelling, and climate factors like El Niño-Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and North Pacific Gyre Oscillation, affected the variations of sedimentary nitrogen isotope (d 15 N sed ) in the Santa Barbara Basin (SBB). Sedimentary nitrogen isotopes has often been used as a proxy for the denitrification process to track temporal record. For instance, the long-term variations of the SBB d 15 N sed signature with decreasing and increasing trend from 1940 to 2019 reflect changes in denitrification Frontiers in Marine Science frontiersin.org 01