Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Composition of Coastal Ecosystems

Estuary: is a body of water that is partially open to the ocean's coast. It has a source of fresh water, from a stream or a river, which interacts with salty ocean water and the mix is called "brackish".
Estuarine environments are among the most productive on earth, creating more organic matter each year than comparably-sized areas of forest, grassland, or agricultural land. The tidal, sheltered waters of estuaries also support unique communities of plants and animals especially adapted for life at the margin of the sea. 

Many different habitat types are found in and around estuaries, including shallow open waters, freshwater and salt marshes, swamps, sandy beaches, mud and sand flats, rocky shores, oyster reefs, mangrove forests, river deltas, tidal pools, and seagrasses.

http://water.epa.gov/type/oceb/nep/about.cfm
 An example of an estuary is the Amazon River

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