Why are estuarine ecosystems important

In this section About estuaries Why estuaries are important. Threats to estuaries. Topics Water Estuaries About estuaries Why estuaries are important Why estuaries are important Estuaries provide a wide variety of habitats and wildlife and significant commercial and recreational benefits. Slide controls:. Wildlife expand. Wetlands expand. Recreation expand. Cultural benefit expand. Scientific benefit expand. Aesthetic benefit expand. Economic benefit expand.

Estuaries are where rivers and oceans collide. Their ecosystems are important resources for animals, humans, and water quality. Share on facebook.

Share on google. Share on twitter. Share on linkedin. Types of Estuaries While estuaries can also be called bays, lagoons, swamps, inlets, salt marshes, and much more, there are four specific types of estuaries.

Coastal plain estuary: an estuary created by a sea level rise. The risen sea fills in an existing river valley. These are also referred to as drowned river valleys. In other words, earthquakes!

When two tectonic plates separate or when one folds underneath the other, the resulting depression may fill with water to create a new estuary. Bar-built estuary: an estuary created when a lagoon or bay is protected by a barrier-island, such as a sandbar. The barrier islands form parallel to the coastline, which bars the estuary from ocean water. Fjord estuary: an estuary created by glaciers.

After glaciers retreated, the narrow openings flooded with seawater creating steep-walled estuaries. Estuary vs. Delta The main difference? Animals and Estuarine Ecosystems Estuaries are crawling with critters like snails, fish, rays, migratory birds, otters, oysters, sea turtles, and even sharks and crocodiles! Why are Estuaries Important? For nature: Estuarine habitats make for one of the most biologically productive ecosystems.

For humans: There is economic value of estuaries due to their recreational tourism, commercial fisheries, and educational output in scientific studies. Threats to Estuaries Unfortunately, the wildlife and the benefits from estuaries are threatened by a variety of factors including: Overharvesting and overfishing Growing populations in coastal watersheds Dredging Industrial and nutrient pollution Oil and gas drilling Garbage pollution Too much of one thing becomes a problem, but you can help by joining Ocean Blue Project.

Spread the Word! Estuaries are important natural places. In addition to essential habitats for birds, fish, insects, and other wildlife, estuaries provide goods and services that are economically and ecologically indispensable, such as commercial fishing and recreational opportunities.

Estuaries provide critical habitat for species that are valued commercially, recreationally, and culturally. Birds, fish, amphibians, insects, and other wildlife depend on estuaries to live, feed, nest, and reproduce. Some organisms, like oysters, make estuaries their permanent home; others, like horseshoe crabs, use them to complete only part of their life cycle.

Estuaries provide stopovers for migratory bird species such as mallard and canvasback ducks. Many fish, including American shad, Atlantic menhaden and striped bass, spend most of their lives in the ocean, but return to the brackish waters of estuaries to spawn. Estuaries are often the economic centers of coastal communities.

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. The estuary is an ecosystem — a group of living and non-living things interacting with each other. The physical environment of the ecosystem is the habitat in which organisms live.

New Zealand estuaries include many different habitat types, such as sandflats, mudflats, tidal channels, shellfish beds, saltmarsh, seagrass meadows and mangrove forests. Because estuaries are highly dynamic environments subject to processes occurring on the land and in the sea, the locations, sizes and types of habitats can change relatively quickly, or form over years or decades.

Each habitat type has different ecological functions as well as values for people. The habitat must provide the organisms within it with what they need for survival such as food, water oxygen and minerals. Nutrients are brought in by rivers and dispersed by tidal currents.