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A ria (/ ˈ r iː ə /; [1] Galician: ría, feminine noun derived from río, river) is a coastal inlet formed by the partial submergence of an unglaciated river valley. It is a drowned river valley that remains open to the sea.
A cove is a small bay or coastal inlet. They usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creeks, or recesses in a coast are often considered coves. Colloquially, the term can be used to describe a sheltered bay.
An inlet is a (usually long and narrow) indentation of a shoreline, such as a small arm, cove, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh, [1] that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea.
A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. [1] [2] [3] A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a narrow entrance. A fjord is an elongated bay formed by glacial action. [4]
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.
The term coastal zone is used to refer to a region where interactions of sea and land processes occur. [10] Both the terms coast and coastal are often used to describe a geographic location or region located on a coastline (e.g., New Zealand's West Coast, or the East, West, and Gulf Coast of the United States.)
Definition (marine biology), context, extra terminology [ edit ] In marine biology , the neritic zone , also called coastal waters , the coastal ocean or the sublittoral zone , [ 3 ] refers to that zone of the ocean where sunlight reaches the ocean floor , that is, where the water is never so deep as to take it out of the photic zone .
Diagram showing a spit A spit contrasted with other coastal landforms. Curonian Spit, divided between Russia and Lithuania. A spit (cognate with the word for a rotisserie bar) or sandspit is a deposition bar or beach landform off coasts or lake shores.