The Sediments Within The Intertidal Zone

Mangroves are halophyte plants that are physiologically amended to survive in habitat containing high concentration of salt in the soil water even though salt is not a physical requirement for growth; hence they are facultative halophytes (Dictionary, 2015). Mangroves at Nudgee Beach have developed three special mechanisms to manage the excess salt levels in their environment due to the disability of enzymes function at high salt concentration. Each species of mangroves are able to either: exclude (prevent salt entering), extrude (take salt out) or accumulate large amounts sodium chloride, enabling them to survive in their ecosystem (University of Sydney, 2015). Some species of mangrove have more than one of the above characteristics. The process

Sand dunes act as a natural barrier against coastal storms and beach erosion caused by strong, destructive wind and waves. They are a vital part of maintaining our beaches as they absorb the impact

The Effects of Human Activity on Coastal Landforms Human activities add another layer of complexity to the natural processes of coastal lands and materials. These activities may have direct or indirect effects on our changing coastlines. They may effect sources of new sediment to the coast and the movement of sediment within the coastal environment. Sediment starvation caused by river and coastal management is one effect of human activities on the coast. For some coastal regions, such as the Pacific coast, a large part of their sediment is supplied by rivers.

Thesis statement- Coastal erosion in the Gulf South region has and continues to be an environmental

Turbidity and nutrient levels occur within Australia’s river systems, generally coincide in Australia's river systems. A large proportion of the suspended sediment in Australian rivers results from vegetation removal, leading to gully and stream bank erosion and sheetwash. Phosphorus is overwhelmingly associated with such particulate loads (The National Land and Water Resources Audit, 2002).

In the course of the past year or so, the world has under gone immense natural disasters. Including but not limited to: hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires, blizzards, and more. These unfortunate events all have a source of which they occurred. At the same time, the world’s oceans have under gone less noticeable but apparent changes as well. These changes include temperature variations, heightened acidification, intensified salinity, and more. However, a specific issue is the effect of Indiana’s activities impacting ocean life through nutrient and sediment pollution. There is a multifarious number of reasons that could affect ocean life, even in Indiana, which one will discuss throughout this report. One will describe sediment runoff, the

Furthermore, estuaries are generally influenced by the tides, yet still remain protected from the powerful ocean waves, winds, and storms that the land forms as barrier islands or peninsulas. In fact, one of the most productive on earth are estuarian environments that create more organic matter each year than comparable areas of forest, grassland, or agricultural land. The tidal waters of estuaries also support unique communities of plants and animals especially adapted for life at the margin of the sea. A numerous of different habitat spieces are found living in estuaries, including rocky shores, sandy beachs, oyster reefs, shallow open waters, freshwater and salt marshes, swamps, mud and sand flats, seagrasses, tidal pools, mangrove forests, and even river deltas.

The erosion of shorelines is a natural process that can have beneficial or adverse impacts on the creation and maintenance of habitats. Sands and gravels eroded from the shores of coastal bays maintain the beach as a natural barrier between the open water and coastal wetlands. Beaches move back and forth onshore, offshore and along shore with changing wave conditions. The finer-grained silts and clays derived from the erosion of shorelines are sorted and carried as far as the waters of wetlands or tidal flats, where benefits are derived from addition of the new material. However, excessively high sediment loads can smother submerged aquatic vegetation beds, cover shellfish beds and tidal flats, fill in riffle

The intertidal rocky shore of Caloundra Beach is inhabited by diverse range of biodiversity of animals and plants, many of which have developed high levels of adaptations throughout their existence. The very boundary of marine and terrestrial ecosystem, this environment is subjected to extremes of the physical environment such as temperature, desiccation, wave turbulence as well the ecological interactions that commonly occur in biotic communities (e.g. competition, predation). However Rocky intertidal shores are easily accessible by humans and provide an enjoyable opportunity for passive recreation and for science and environmental education as well.

The aim of this experiment is to test the changes in and effects o abiotic and biotic factors along a transect line form low tide to high tide in the mangroves at Nudgee Beach. The hypothesis is that at low tide the soil texture would be a brown clay with a pH of 9-10, however; at high tide the soil would be light brown sand with a ph of -8-9. The purpose of this report is to analyze whether the hypothesis true. The results found match with the hypothesis. At low tide the pH was 8 ½ , whereas at high tide the pH was 8. At each tide, the air temperatures were similar, except for the low tide, where the temperature was 17.5°C. The conclusion made was that because mangroves grow better on ecosystems where there is a high level of rainfall

The oceanic zone is made up of three main zones. The epipelagic zone, the mesopelagic zone, and the bathypelagic zone. The epipelagic zone is the surface layer of the ocean, and this where most of the ocean life lives. The mesopelagic zone is the layer of the ocean below the epipelagic zone. Not a lot of sunlight penetrates this area of the ocean. The zone under the mesopelagic zone is the bathypelagic zone. No sunlight reaches this zone. Together all of these zones make up the oceanic zone.

A coastal saltwater marsh is an ecosystem daily flooded by tides, and mostly consists of mud. They are usually located in the in the upper foreshore (seashore) area between land and brackish water in stable temperatures and high latitude locations. The area is flooded every day, delivering sediments, nutrients, and water. The plants that live in this region often trap sediments. Since they have daily access to nutrients, the marshes are involved in the delivery of nutrients to coastal regions and support a large portion of aquatic organisms’ food web. However, only plants and animals accustomed to high salt concentrations (3.5% salt) such as herbs, grasses, shrubs, fish, and crabs can live in these marshes. Some abiotic factors that affect

This article explores the possibility of threat to the ecosystem and the food chain of the Ross Sea. The famous Antarctic toothfish plays a vital role in the food chain of the Ross Sea because it serves as a main meal for higher order organisms. Researchers as well as locals have noticed the decrease in the Antarctic toothfish because fishermen were not catching nearly as many toothfish as they were before 2002. This observation was puzzling because the use of a new tool for monitoring the amount of Antarctic toothfish in 2014 showed that the prevalence of the Antarctic toothfish was similar to that before 2002. These findings pushed researchers to hypothesize that either the Antarctic toothfish had recently returned to the McMurdo Sound or

1. One of the paramount topics we have covered in this course is oceanography (no surprises there). Rather than thinking of oceanography as “just” the study of the ocean, I have always viewed oceanography as the study of marine biology, marine chemistry, marine geology and marine physics. Before diving into any sort of detail, one can see (from the above) that oceanography incorporates four fundamental sciences into one topic; therefore, when asked to list three ways in which marine geology and marine chemistry interrelate, the possibilities are endless. Because we are to list just three examples, I am going to focus my answer on the Earth’s composition/layers. The first way these two fields interrelate is though convection currents (mantle). Density and temperature are two topics central to chemistry. Because density and temperature, along with depth, play a critical role in plate movement (geology), the plate tectonic theory is one example. The second way is through radioactive decay. Specifically, we use radioactive dating (e.g., isotope dating and half-lives) to determine the exact age of a specific geological structures. The third way these two fields interrelate is in determining the composition of the Earth’s inner core. I saved this example for last because it shows how marine physics can also be interrelated in marine chemistry and marine geology. We [scientific community] have a sound understanding of the Earth’s composition because of mass, density and temperature

The greatest abundance of micro and macroplastics were found at the non-urbanized locations, contradicting the initial hypothesis, that micro and macroplastic abundances would be highest at urbanized locations. However, overall microplastic abundance, with the exception of Silver Strand was highest at the two urbanized locations where there was the highest amount of beach goers (figure 3). A study of microplastics in the Chinese inner sea revealed that after sampling sand from both bathing and non-bathing beach sites, bathing sites possessed the greatest amounts of microplastics (Yu, 2016). A potential explanation as to why Silver Strand’s microplastic abundance was so high could be the fact that it offers “fishing, picnicking, as well as