Effective management of estuarine systems requires broad spatial and deep temporal perspectives. In the Anthropocene, human activities have dramatically increased heterogeneity in both dimensions, necessitating sometimes daunting data requirements to separate signal from noise. Over the last fifty years, innovative mixtures of time and space substitution approaches have allowed leveraging of existing data and clarified our gaps in understanding (e.g, the importance of urban systems). Likewise, increasingly sophisticated biogeochemical analyses (e.g., widespread measurement of stable isotopes) have provided unprecedented insight into both modern systems and sedimentary records. Combined, these approaches have transformed our understanding of the estuarine interface between terrestrial and marine systems. Effective management of estuarine systems also requires close connections between 1) this emergent understanding of the terrestrial-estuarine system and 2) the human activities that continue to perturb the systems. It is clear that development of sometimes radical ecological engineering may be necessary to mitigate the human disturbances and allow the natural systems to remain ecologically healthy. However, these interventions can, in turn, affect the terrestrial-estuarine systems in novel ways, requiring consistent and tight feedbacks between the ecological conditions and human interventions. This constant vigilance requires a wide variety of both short term and long-term data streams to ensure efficacy. This symposium will synthesize 1) emerging comprehensive understanding of the terrestrial-estuarine system and 2) novel and exciting mitigation approaches for nutrients and community shifts in the wider terrestrial-estuarine system. Most of the symposium will focus on work in the humid eastern United States, the same systems where pioneers like Grace Brush have developed and led comprehensive approaches to study and management of the terrestrial-estuarine system.