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Estuary ecosystem
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Estuaries are special they occur in areas where freshwater meets and mixes with salty ocean waters. The term Estuaries refers to protected, nearshore waters, such as bays and lagoons. Estuaries are unique systems where two types of salt and fresh meet. The ebb and flow of tides may leave some plants and animals, such as seagrasses and oysters, temporarily high and dry. Shallow estuarine water temperatures can range from freezing to more than 100 degrees F during the course of a year. An estuaries isn’t consider an invasive nor native type of species. Estuarine organisms are naturally adapted to withstand these ranges in salinity, tides, and temperatures. Estuarine must have a balance flow of fresh and salt water. There are multiple ways to interrupt this …show more content…
Estuaries moniker is "The support of the sea" this consider the most proper title for estuaries. More than 70 percent of Florida's recreationally and economically imperative fishes, scavengers, and shellfish spend a portion of their lives in estuaries, for the most part when they are youthful. Numerous fishes and shellfish move seaward to generate or breed. The eggs form into hatchlings (juvenile structures) that are transported into estuaries by tides and streams. The shallow water, salt swamps, seagrasses, and mangrove roots give brilliant concealing spots from bigger, vast water predators. A few animal categories develop in estuaries for a brief span; others stay there forever.Estuaries are among the most gainful biological communities in nature. Waterways and streams channel into estuaries, getting supplements from uplands. Plants utilize these supplements, alongside the sun's vitality, carbon dioxide, and water, to make nourishment. Among the most imperative plant frames that add to estuaries are minute green growth called phytoplankton. Other plant frames incorporate bog grasses, mangroves,
On Wednesday, February 15th, I was able to have the opportunity to listen to Andrew Lipman. Andrew Lipman is the author of The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. In the novel, he explained the life of Native Americans living in New England and on the coast of Long Island. During this time, most individuals relied on trading natural resources. In order for profit for the resources, the colonists and Native Americans used wampum. Wampum was used as a sacred gift in Native American culture as a peace offering, funerals and marriages. Colonialists had an advantage towards using wampum. They used beads as a commodity for furs. Native Americans relied on canoes for transportation. Canoes can hold up to fifty people.
One of the Bays biggest resources is its oysters. Oysters are filter feeders which mean they feed on agley and clean the water. The oysters feed on agley and other pollutants in the bay turning them into food, then they condense the food down to nutrients and sometimes developed pearls. Filtering the water helps the oysters to grow, and also helps clean the Chesapeake Bay. One oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day, Oysters used to be able to filter the Bay in about a week. However, these creatures are now scarce in the bay. The Chesapeake Bays Oyster (crassostrea virginica) Population has declined severely because of over harvesting, agricultural runoff, and disease. Now the Chesapeake Bay is becoming polluted without the oysters and the water is not nearly as clean as it once was. The Chesapeake Bay was the first estuary in the nation to be targeted for restoration as an integrated watershed and ecosystem. (Chesapeake Bay Program n/d). This report will show the cause and effect of the Chesapeake Bay's Oyster decline on the Bay.
Nature designed Florida to be one large marine ecosystem. Florida is one big sand peninsula located below the 40th longitudinal North American line. Three bodies of salt water (Gulf of Mexico, Strait of Florida and Atlantic Ocean) surround three out of four directions of Florida. Man-made canals, natural lakes, rivers and estuaries are confined within the State of Florida’s physical boundaries. All of these form an interlocking system of waterways that impact the interconnected marine environment (marine ecosystem). All of Florida’s waterways are connected back to the surrounding bodies of water while passing through Florida’s sub-tropical and temperate zones and impact the delicate marine ecosystem balance. Man and nature are causing a negative impact to this region like never before. Hurricanes, lack of green initiatives, garbage, pollution and the stripping of natural resources for population growth are decimating Florida’s natural ecosystems.
Eutrophication is a concern in the Chesapeake Bay. Eutrophication is caused by excessive amounts of nutrients. Excessive nutrients in the bay have negative affects on the bay's ecosystem. The extra nutrients make the environment unbalanced. The extra nutrients cause a chain reaction that depletes oxygen and kills most of the organisms in that area. This is what is known as a dead zone.
The Long Island Sound is an estuary, and is in fact one of the largest in the world. An estuary is a place where salt water from the ocean mixes with fresh water from the rivers that drain from the land. Moreover, like other estuaries, the Long Island Sound has an abundance of fish and other waterfowl that add to the natural balance of the island, as well as one of the most important economic factors (Tedesco). Like other estuaries around the world, the Sound provides breeding, feeding, nesting, and nursery areas for many species that will spend most of their adult lives in the oceans (Long Island Sound Study). Despite these similarities to other estuaries, the Long Island Sound is unique from anywhere else in the world. Unlike other estuaries, the Long Island Sound does not just have one connection to the sea but it has two. It has two major sources of fresh water flowing into the bay that empty into the ocean. It combines this two-...
The Florida Everglades is one of the most diverse wetland ecosystems in the United States. These tropical wetlands span an area of more than seven hundred square miles in southern Florida. The term Everglade means river of grass. The system starts in central Florida near Orlando and travels southwest to the tip of Florida. The Everglades has a wet season and a dry season which causes a great change in hydrology. During the wet season the system is a slow moving river that is sixty miles wide and over a hundred miles long. During the dry season water levels drop and some areas will completely dry up. The Everglades has many different aquatic environments all having interdependent ecosystems. The most important factor for all these environments is water. It helps shape the land, vegetation, and all the organism that live in each area. Each environment has particular needs for the organisms living in that area. Throughout the years humans have diverted the water to fit their varying needs. The state has built dikes and levees, dug canals, and have built locks to divert the water. This has all been done to keep areas completely dry for developing and agricultural needs. Today, The Everglades is half the size of its original size. Throughout the years many restoration acts have been created and updated. The Everglades restoration projects have been the most expensive environmental repairs in The United States. This is because The Everglades is one of the three most important wetland areas in the world. The Everglades National Park is the home of thirty six protected species including the West Indian Manatee, the American Crocodile, and the Florida Panther. The Everglades also homes hundreds of species of birds, fish, mammals, and repti...
...sica Leahy, and Kathleen Bell. "Interactions between Human Communities and Estuaries in the Pacific Northwest: Trends and Implications for Management." Estuaries. 26.4 (Aug., 2003): 994-1009 . Print.
In conducting my research, I observed activity on the rocky shallow shore off the coast of Washington State where I found a small tidal pool (workbook). The community I am studying consists of three producers: Nori Seaweed (Porphyra), Black Pine (Neorhodomela), and Coral Weed (Corallina), three sessile consumers: Goose Neck Barnacles (Mitella), Acorn Barnacles (Semibalanus), and Mussels (Mytilus), and lastly four mobile consumers: Whelk (Nucella), Chiton (Katharina), Starfish (Pisaster), and the Green Crab (Carcinus). In order for producers to survive they must avoid their only predator, Chiton, as well as compete for space amongst each other. Coral Weed is the strongest competitor for space between the producers do to calcium carbonate in its cells creating structural support (SimU text), Black Pine is second, and Nori Seaweed is the least
Abiotic factors are things that are nonliving that influence an environment and it's inhabitants. Some of the abiotic factors that are attributed to coastal erosion in Louisiana are hurricanes, tropical storms, elevation, sunlight, overnutrition, sea-level rise, and deposition. Hurricanes bring about larger waves which cause dune erosion or beach erosion (Clark et al., 1998). This is significant because beaches and/or the dunes of the beach serve as buffers to the coastline and the ecosystem. As the beach or dunes recede from the erosion caused by these large waves and an increased sea-level the flora and fauna that help sustain the area die off or retreat to a more habitable zone leaving the wetlands in a critical state often resulting in a total loss of the area (Stockdon et al., 2012). Due to the nature of the Gulf of Mexico large destructive storms such as hurricanes or tropica...
Globally coastal wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate, the problem is most of society does not realize the value of these precious wetlands. Coastal wetlands provide an important role in the coastal ecosystem. “Coastal wetlands provide critical services such as absorbing energy from coastal storms, preserving shorelines, protecting human populations and infrastructure, supporting commercial seafood harvests, absorbing pollutants and serving as critical habitat for migratory bird populations”(Anonymous, 2011). Coastal wetlands are an economical asset as well as an environmental one.
According to NOAA phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that continuously convert sunlight and nutrients into living tissue. Phytoplankton can be harmful to the bay because they at an uncontrollable rate causing harmful algae blooms when there is an abundance of nutrients. Phytoplankton also serve as the main food source for a larger but still microscopic organism named Zooplankton. Marine Bio.org did a study on zooplnkton revealing that they are very weak swimmers making them an easy food source for any larger organsim. Zooplanktons’ main purpose serves as the main food source for small fish and
...enthic, coral reef, and estuaries. Some freshwater habitats include marches, lakes, rivers, ponds, wetlands, and bogs.
You’d be wrong. In fact “To produce 50 million gallons per day of freshwater, Carlsbad will draw in 100 million gallons of seawater”. Worse yet “The discharge water is so salty that it does not dissolve well in water”. This means that every gallon of freshwater the plant creates, it produces a discharge gallon that is twenty percent saltier, that is released back into the ocean. If San Diego Plans to turn 56 million gallons of seawater to freshwater everyday, it is expected to release another 56 million gallons of discharged water. These discharges make for areas of water where sea life can no longer live, including the plants and
What is the Estuary? Estuary is a partially enclosed body of water formed where freshwater from rivers and streams flows into the ocean, mixing with the salty sea water” as noted by (Biomes (n.d). The Estuary is part of the Marine Ecosystem (ocean and lakes) it is believed that the Estuary is the part of the bay where fresh water mix with saltwater rivers once this mixture takes place it is consider to be brackish water that is not as salty as ocean water. Furthermore estuary ecosystem is along the coast thousands birds, fish, mammals, plant life , and other animals seek habitation in the estuary ecosystem although there are rapid fluctuation in temperatures from hot to cold (Adapting to estuaries (n.d). The biotic factors are organisms that coexist in one particular habitat, such as bird like the great blue heron, geese, fish, bacteria and nutrients many of the fish in the ocean depend upon the sustainability of estuary ecosystem. Phytoplankton and zooplankton is mainly produced by estuary ecosystem, zooplankton thrive off the phytoplankton then is transfer to t...
An ecosystem is a community of species that live together and interact with each other and their physical non-living environment. Florida’s natural ecosystem is extremely important to the diverse mixture of species throughout the entire state of Florida. Florida is surrounded by two oceans on three sides of Florida, the oceans are the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Florida has a diversity of species and this include vascular plant, fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal species that are found nowhere else in the world. In Florida’s mainland, it consists of many bodies of water and several of them are freshwater. The freshwater biome is made up of lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers. Most freshwater biomes consist of moving water and