Wet and Dry Coastal Plant Communities of West Bengal, India

Abstract

The coast, marine and terrestrial interface, is one of the important biogeographic regions of India due to its immense economic and ecological services. It is broadly divided into two major systems on the basis of topography and geomorphology: dry coastal ecosystem and wet coastal ecosystem. The dry coast constitutes, i) Sandy coast with sandy beach and sand dunes and, ii) Rocky coast having rocks and vertical cliffs, devoid of beach and dunes. Indian coastline with 7,500 km mostly covers dry sandycoast in eastern region and there are present dry rocky coast in western part. The wet coastal ecosystem is connected with lagoons, backwaters, estuary and deltas. The characteristics as well as types of vegetation in these two zones have been presented in a brief way. The present communication is an attempt to highlight the formation of various plant communities, specially, throughput the coast of Bengal on basis of field exposure and published contributions of previous workers in these fields.