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The hadal zone, also known as the hadopelagic zone, is the deepest region of the ocean, lying within oceanic trenches. The hadal zone ranges from around 6 to 11 km (3.7 to 6.8 mi; 20,000 to 36,000 ft) below sea level , and exists in long, narrow, topographic V-shaped depressions.
Location of the Mariana Trench: an example of a hadal zone. Hadal zone microbial communities are the groups of microorganisms which reside within hadal zones, which consist of many individual deep oceanic trenches found around the world. [1] The environmental conditions of the trench environments select for the microbe communities.
Invoking images of the open ocean's surface, the imagination can conjure up an endless empty space. A flat line parting the blue below from the blue above. But in reality a diverse array of species occupy this unique boundary layer. A tangle of terms exist for different organisms occupying different niches of the ocean's surface.
Organisms living in this zone have a highly variable and often hostile environment, and have evolved various adaptations to cope with and even exploit these conditions. One easily visible feature of intertidal communities is vertical zonation , where the community is divided into distinct vertical bands of specific species going up the shore.
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 epipelagic zone, otherwise known as the sunlit zone or the euphotic zone, goes to a depth of about 200 meters (656 feet). It is the depth of water to which sunlight is able to penetrate. Although it is only 2 to 3 percent of the entire ocean, the epipelagic zone is home to a massive number of organisms. [3]
The thin band between perpetual night and day, known as a termination zone, could have just the right ingredients for life to flourish.
The edges of habitats, in this case the land and sea, are themselves often significant ecosystems, and the littoral zone is a prime example. A typical rocky shore can be divided into a spray zone or splash zone (also known as the supratidal zone ), which is above the spring high-tide line and is covered by water only during storms, and an ...