The vegetation of estuaries and sea shores

Abstract

The zone between the sea and the land is occupied by a diversity of ecosystem types developed over a variety of habitats — dunes, brackish lagoons, intertidal mud and sand flats — presented by the coastal zone. In spite of the difficulties presented by salinity, the inshore marine and estuarine habitats are some of the ‘most naturally fertile in the world’ (Odum 1963). There are several reasons for this: (a) the rapid circulation of nutrients and food promoted by tidal action; (b) the trapping of nutrients both physically in mud-derived land and biologically by direct extraction from continually stirred sea water, a process in which both animals and plants participate; (c) the often more equable local climatic conditions; and (d) the close contact between stages of the food chain.