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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.
A marine habitat is a habitat that supports marine life. Marine life depends in some way on the saltwater that is in the sea (the term marine comes from the Latin mare , meaning sea or ocean). A habitat is an ecological or environmental area inhabited by one or more living species . [ 1 ]
Cape Cod also acts as a barrier to migration, meaning that most coastal aquatic species in the Gulf of Maine are absent in other parts of the coastal United States. [4] The Gulf of Maine is the southern limit of the northern shrimp ( Pandalus borealus ), a circumpolar shrimp that breeds in the Gulf of Maine in the winter.
One of the most comprehensive early classifications was the system of 53 coastal provinces developed by Briggs in 1974. [3] The near-global system of 64 large marine ecosystems has a partial biogeographic basis. WWF Global 200. The World Wildlife Fund—WWF identified 43 priority marine ecoregions, as part of its Global 200 initiative. [4]
Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through overfishing, habitat loss, the introduction of invasive species, ocean pollution, ocean acidification and ocean warming. These impact marine ecosystems and food webs and may result in consequences as yet unrecognised for the biodiversity and continuation of marine life forms.
The map of North America with the Western Interior Seaway during the Campanian. The Western Interior Seaway (also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, the North American Inland Sea, or the Western Interior Sea) was a large inland sea that split the continent of North America into two landmasses for 34 million years.
"Level I" divides North America into 15 broad ecoregions. "Level II" subdivides the continent into 52 smaller ecoregions. "Level III" subdivides those regions again into 182 ecoregions. [1] [2] "Level IV" is a further subdivision of Level III ecoregions. Level IV mapping is still underway but is complete across most of the United States.
A number of states and provinces along the North American coast drain into the Gulf of Maine. Much of that region is depicted here. The watershed of the gulf encompasses an area of 69,000 square miles (180,000 km 2 ), including all of Maine, 70% of New Hampshire, 56% of New Brunswick, 41% of Massachusetts, and 36% of Nova Scotia.