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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.
Wetlands are frequently being destroyed for development, agriculture, and other uses. Wetlands have decreased by as much as 50% since 1900 and in some parts of the world by 90%. [ 19 ] [ 20 ] Inland wetlands, freshwater marshes making up about 20-25% of all freshwater wetlands globally, [ 21 ] have been decreasing approximately 1.2% each year ...
Wetlands exist on every continent, except Antarctica. [19] The water in wetlands is either freshwater, brackish or saltwater. [18] The main types of wetland are defined based on the dominant plants and the source of the water. For example, marshes are wetlands dominated by emergent herbaceous vegetation such as reeds, cattails and sedges.
Mangrove forests live at the interface between the land, the ocean, and the atmosphere, and are centres for the flow of energy and matter between these systems. They have attracted much research interest because of the various ecological functions of the mangrove ecosystems, including runoff and flood prevention, storage and recycling of ...
The following is a list of marine ecoregions, as defined by the WWF and The Nature Conservancy. The WWF/Nature Conservancy scheme groups the individual ecoregions into 12 marine realms, which represent the broad latitudinal divisions of polar, temperate, and tropical seas, with subdivisions based on ocean basins.
The demersal zone is the part of the sea or ocean (or deep lake) consisting of the part of the water column near to (and significantly affected by) the seabed and the benthos. [1] The demersal zone is just above the benthic zone and forms a layer of the larger profundal zone .
Saltwater tidal marshes live on coastlines in areas that are not completely exposed to the open ocean. The volume of water is dependent on the tides. Plant variation throughout marshes can be due to differences in tide exposure and frequency. [7] Some different types include bottomland hardwood swamps, mangrove swamps, and palustrine wetlands. [13]
The wrack zone is most commonly associated with a sandy beach habitat but can also be present in rocky shores, mangroves, salt marshes, and other coastal systems. [1] Debris is carried up the intertidal zone as the tide comes in, and is deposited on the sand when the tide goes out. The zone can be recognized as a linear patch of debris toward ...