Answer:
Estuaries connect land and sea. They are partly enclosed bodies of water situated at the edge of the land – a mixture of freshwater from streams and rivers and saltwater from the sea. Estuaries come in all shapes and sizes and can be called harbours, inlets, bays, lagoons, sounds, wetlands and swamps. They are the nurseries of oceans. Many fish and shellfish are spawned in estuaries. Full of nutrients and home to resilient organisms, estuaries provide rich feeding grounds for fish and birds.
Estuaries occur where water runoff from the land interacts with the sea. Generally, there are two common types of estuary, bar-built and riverine. Estuarine ecosystems are composed of relatively heterogeneous biologically diverse subsystems, that is, water column, mud and sand flats, bivalve reefs and beds, and seagrass meadows as well as salt marshes that are connected by mobile animals and tidal water flows that are integral components in the geomorphological structure of creeks and channels that together form one of the most productive natural systems in the biosphere. These systems function as traps for all kinds of suspended and dissolved materials, nursery grounds for organisms including many commercially important species and recreational zones for humans. They are also complex systems that exchange matter, energy, and information with terrestrial and marine ecosystems as well as their internal subsystems. Although estuarine ecosystems are resilient, continually increasing disturbances of over-fishing, pollution, and disease in the past century have forced some estuaries into alternate states. Thus, wise management will be essential for the maintenance and restoration of these systems in the future.
What are the different habitats found in estuaries?
Estuarine ecosystems are composed of relatively heterogeneous biologically diverse subsystems, that is, water column, mud and sand flats, bivalve reefs and beds, and seagrass meadows as well as salt marshes that are connected by mobile animals and tidal water flows that are integral components in the geomorphological ...
