This session is the first of three Organized Oral Sessions devoted to “Coupled Biogeochemical Cycles: Recent Success and future directions.” This first session will being with an introduction to biogeochemical cycles (W.H. Schlesinger, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies) and continue with an exploration of the manipulation of biogeochemical cycles from the plot to whole-ecosystem scale. In addition to two more Organized Oral Sessions, there will be a Workshop on Wednesday evening which will consist of a panel discussion on recent successes and future directions. Further, we are hopeful that for the ESA Wednesday noon time talk on "Recent Advances in Ecology," we can work jointly with the ESA program committee to identify a speaker on the topic of coupled biogeochemical cycles. With funding from NSF we (Jon Cole, Adrien Finzi and Inez Fung) propose this two-day Organized Oral Session to explore the recent successes and future directions for research in coupled biogeochemical cycles. About 60-70 people will attend this workshop, including 12 invited speakers, 10 graduate students, 4 organizers and about 40 scientists (including some early-career) who have worked recently on CBC or allied fields. Many of the invitees will be PI’s who have received NSF funding through special programs in both DEB and GEO that supported research in biogeochemistry or coupled biogeochemical cycle. The product of the workshop will be a series of peer-reviewed papers in a major scientific journal in open-access mode. Funds to purchase open access are budgeted. These papers should be a valuable touchstone for assessing the current status, and more importantly, suggested future course for CBC research and its interaction with other fields. There will be three Organized Oral Sessions and an evening workshop. The workshop will consist of a panel discussion with audience participation to both summarize the status of knowledge and make specific recommendation as to how CBC research might be funded in the future.