Contributions from Particles in Europe (PiE) 2010, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France: an introduction.

This special issue of Geo-Marine Letters presents selected contributions from the international conference Particles in Europe (PiE) 2010 organized by Sequoia Scientific, Inc., and the Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche (LOV) on 15-17 November 2010 in Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, and guest-edited by Ole Mikkelsen, Malik Chami and David Doxaran. PiE was initiated in 2008, in order to promote and further our understanding of the importance of suspended particulate matter (SPM) for a very wide range of processes in the aquatic environment-from optics and acoustics, over sediment transport, to the global carbon balance. The papers in this special issue are in particular concerned with the interaction between SPM and water optical properties, as well as how to use optical proxy measurements to understand SPM processes. The next PiE conference is scheduled for 17-19 October 2012 in Barcelona, Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]