Download Salt Marshes Power Point

By Alex P. ,Haley, and Preema
Human and Marine Interactions
• Salt marshes provide more
ecosystem services to coastal
populations then any other
environment. Salt marshes have
experienced intense and varied
human impacts that range from
reclamation, waste disposal, and
livestock grazing. Salt marshes
now must be understood as highly
valuable habitats whose worth is
generated by a suite of ecosystem
services that are critical in
sustaining healthy lifestyles for
coastal populations and the
natural resources they depend on.
• Human use of Salt Marshes varies,
but does include tourism in some
areas as nature reserves, bait
collecting for fishermen, and also
provide ideal conditions for the
farming of some species of shellfish.
Marshes have a very high levels of
biological productions, therefore
are very important in supporting
fisheries.
Human and Marine Interactions
• This coastal zone has living animals, it’s
crawling with hundreds of kinds of
invertebrates. Fiddler crabs, hermit crabs
and stone crabs join snails, mussels and
worms in finding food and shelter in the
salt marsh. Fish and shrimp come to this
coastal zone looking for food and a place
to lay their eggs. They also look for
shelter in the salt marsh until they have
fully grown. Marine animals aren’t the
only ones to benefit from the marsh,
ducks, geese and wading birds come to
feast on the grass, fish and insects. The
animals can not migrate there for they
do not have big enough spaces for them
too.
• fishermen use this coastal zone to
catch bate for fishing. Birdwatchers
go there to take pictures and enjoy
looking at the birds. Photographers
go their to take pictures of the
wildlife that happens there.
• Slat marshes benefits humans and
surrounding ecosystems by
sheltering coasts from erosion and
filtering nutrients and sediments
from the water column
Location, Formation, and Types
• Salt Marshes usually form in areas that are well
sheltered. Areas such as creeks, inlets and estuaries
where fine sediments can be deposited. Salt
marshes may be formed behind spits. The zone
behind a spit becomes a sheltered area, water
movement slows down and more material gets
deposited. The deposition may form a salt marsh.
Coastal areas that already have mud flats may also
form marshes.
• Ramped Marsh Shore
• Salt marshes are found in sheltered intertidal areas.
Hey are located all over the world, in middle to high
latitude places. Salt marsh grasses build up the
habitat by trapping fine sediments that have
washed up from uplands. Marshes thrive along
protected shore lines and are a common habitat in
estuaries. Almost half coast of the USA’s salt
marshes are located along the gulf
Changes in wind climate which affects waves
Smooth sloping surface over a mudflat with no
greenery that slowly changing upwards and
landwards, turns into a salt marsh.
• Cliffed marsh shore
Channel migration
Changes in sediment supply
• Spur and Furrow Marsh shore
Occur in finger-like spurs and furrows as erosion
occurs.
Characteristics and Physical Features
Characteristics of salt marshes:
• Marshes tend to have a rotten-egglike odour, this is because of
Hydrogen sulphide.
• Red streaks in the mud of marshes
indicate the presence of oxidized
iron. This is a common and important
element in marshes.
• Normally salt marshes are directly
connected to a sea coast, it can form
off something like an estuary or
embayment with shallow water
features.
Physical Features of salt marshes:
• Plants living in marshes need to
be able to deal with being
engulfed in salt water
• Marshes tend to thrive along
quiet coasts
• Salt marsh soils tend to be
waterlogged and low in oxygen
Control
• Locally: Provincial Ocean Network
• Nationally: Coastal Zone Canada Association
• Globally: North American Waterfowl Management Plan
• From what I can find, no, The United Nations does not
control any salt marshes.
• Some Countries like the United States and Europe control
their Salt Marshes. Other Countries like China tend to
ignore their marshes and keep developing over them.
Laws and Disagreements
• In Canada the North American Wetlands
Conservation Council (
Canada) along with the North American
Waterfowl Management Plan, helps
develop and implement national level
wetland policies and programs in Canada
• Coastal Marshlands Protection Act,
created in 1970, by the state of Georgia,
this act is to protect the marsh and
estuaries’ so that the people are able to
fish, boat, and enjoy the salt water
marshes, without destroying it.
• The National Estuarine Research Reserve
System: protects a total of more than
one million acres of estuarine habitat
divided between twenty-five different
reserves in the United States
• As I have looked over
websites a numerous
amount of times, I can
not seem to find any
disagreements on
who controls Salt
Marshes.
Problems
• The first problem is that the plants that tend to
live in Salt Marshes are freshwater plants. This
causes water stress. This reason causes them to
have to take up water against the osmotic
pressure. To overcome the negative osmotic
pressure, they generate a negative hydrostatic
pressure (by transpiration processes). The plants
have thin, fleshy leaves and are sensitive to extra
stress such as pollution. A well-developed
epidermis and succulent leaves and stems help
plants adapt to these conditions. Evaporation can
be limited by thin leaves with scale-like hairs.
Physiologically, plants are adapted by
accumulating salt in their tissues. In this way,
normal osmosis is possible. Other plants have salt
gland cells on the lower surface of their leaves
and excrete the salt from their tissue.
• The salt marshes are normally associated with
mud flats but also occur on sand flats. These mud
flats are sometimes dominated by algae.
• A second problem is the anoxic environment. The
underground in which the root of the plant is drenched
with water. The tissue of the plants require oxygen for
respiration (breathing). Gas diffusion between gas
particles can only supply this need in soils that are not
waterlogged. Even when the water is drenched with
oxygen, its concentration is too low and the diffusion in
the water is very slow. This problem is solved by
aerenchyma, a tissue that is able to provide air to the
submerged parts of the plants. Roots are superficial
systems because of the anoxic sediments. These systems
are composed of perennial thick roots with a corky layer
and without root hairs. To fix the short, thin and strongly
branched roots, numerous root hairs are developed so
that they can take up nutrients.
• Salt marshes have been disintegrating and dying over the
past two decades along the U.S. Eastern seaboard and
other highly developed coastlines
Abiotic Factors, Temperature, and Salinity
Changes
• The abiotic factors in salt marshes are highly irregular, as
the salinity can alternate. The estuary is a place where
incoming fresh water and ocean water mix, and the
salinity can vary depending on the phase in the tidal
cycle and the amount of rainfall.
• Salt marshes may experience salinities ranging from
almost freshwater to full seawater, and anything living
there must be able to tolerate these wide swings in
environmental conditions.
• Temperature can also be vary in wide ranges, as the air
in summer is much warmer than the water, and the air
in winter is much colder than the water. Air temperature
may be below freezing in winter and over 32.2° C in the
summer.
• Because of these wide changes, salt marshes do not
have a large biodiversity of animals and plants. They
only have a limited number of species, that are able to
tolerate these conditions. Animals and plants in salt
marshes include some that have terrestrial origins, like
grasses, insects, birds and mammals, and others with
marine origins like algae, mollusks, and fish.
• Salt marsh plants cannot grow where waves
are strong, but thrive along quiet coasts.
• Salt marshes are periodically flooded by tides,
so the plants living there must be able to deal
with being submerged in salt water.
• This is stressful for two reasons: the salt and
the water. The salinity, or salt content, varies
depending upon whether the marshes are
located directly adjacent to the ocean or
further upstream in the estuary.
• Salt marsh soils tend to be waterlogged and
low in oxygen which is also stressful to a
plant. The water level and salinity level
determine which species are found in a
particular marshes.
Requirements for a Salt Marsh to develop
• They need fine-grained sediments.
• There may be no strong waves or tidal currents.
• They need salty conditions to grow. They are halo tolerant and have
adaptations to these conditions.
• They need a temperate or cool temperature. Freezing temperatures
can occur, but are not damaging the plants.
• They need a wide tidal range. This is important because it limits the
erosion, makes deposition of sediments possible and causes a wellmarked zonation.
Ending Words

Salt marshes have a whole range of functions. It plays an important role as
a sediment trap. In this way, it regulates the water quality and helps
stabilize coastlines. Salt marshes function as filtering systems and retain
sediments, excess nutrients, toxic chemicals and disease-causing
organisms. They remove nitrates and phosphates from rivers and streams
which receive waste water effluents. They recharge and discharge
groundwater attributing to the water supply. Salt marshes function as an
important habitat, nursery grounds small organisms, shelter, providing
food and a breeding ground for wading birds and other organisms
Sources

http://www.geographysite.co.uk/pages/physical/coastal/saltmarsh.
html

Http://www.sms.si.edu/irlspec/Saltmarsh.ht
m

http://www.slideshare.net/ProfSimonHaslett/s
altmarsh-dynamics-5258462?related=1

http://www.novascotia.ca/coast/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_marsh

http://coastalgadnr.org/eo/sm

http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.230
7/2937158

http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/15583
9/

http://cnsweb.bu.edu/~aseitz/lorna/MarshPaper2.pdf

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/saltmars
h.html

https://www.ec.gc.ca/eauwater/default.asp?lang=En&n=27147C37-1

https://php.radford.edu/~swoodwar/biomes
/?page_id=742

http://www.czca-azcc.org/czczcc2014/home.htm

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/article
s/geography-environment/tidal-marshes

http://www.sms.si.edu/irlspec/Saltmarsh.htm

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/saltmars
h.html