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Some coastal animals are used to humans in developed areas, such as dolphins and seagulls who eat food thrown for them by tourists. Since the coastal areas are all part of the littoral zone, there is a profusion of marine life found just off-coast, including sessile animals such as corals, sponges, starfish, mussels, seaweeds, fishes, and sea ...
Coastal geography is the study of the constantly changing region between the ocean and the land, incorporating both the physical geography (i.e. coastal geomorphology, climatology and oceanography) and the human geography (sociology and history) of the coast.
A marine coastal ecosystem is a marine ecosystem which occurs where the land meets the ocean. Worldwide there is about 620,000 kilometres (390,000 mi) of coastline. Coastal habitats extend to the margins of the continental shelves, occupying about 7 percent of the ocean surface area.
The littoral zone, also called litoral or nearshore, is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. [1] In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated), to coastal areas that are permanently submerged — known as the foreshore — and the terms are often used interchangeably.
A coastal state is a term found in the law of the sea. Although widely used in the legal documents, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), this term lacks a precise definition. The "essential idea" of a coastal state is having an open sea coast and asserting the sovereignty or jurisdiction in the areas of the sea adjacent ...
Some coastal areas have a long area of shallow water that extends far out beyond the landmass into the water and others, for example islands that have formed from ancient volcanos where the 'shelf' or edge of the land mass is very steep, have a very short neritic zone.
Coastal California is heavily influenced by east–west distances to the dominant cold California Current as well as microclimates.Due to hills and coast ranges having strong meteorological effects, summer and winter temperatures (other than occasional heat waves) are heavily moderated by ocean currents and fog with strong seasonal lags compared to interior valleys as little as 10 mi (16 km) away.
The intertidal zone or foreshore is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide; in other words, it is the part of the littoral zone within the tidal range. This area can include several types of habitats with various species of life, such as sea stars, sea urchins, and many species of coral with regional differences in ...