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The water waves at the left travel over the off-reef floor until they encounter the reef slope or fore reef. Then the waves pass over the shallow reef crest. When a wave enters shallow water it shoals, that is, it slows down and the wave height increases. The reef surface is the shallowest part of the reef.
Reef types include fringing reefs, barrier reefs, and atolls. A fringing reef is a reef that is attached to an island. Whereas, a barrier reef forms a calcareous barrier around an island, resulting in a lagoon between the shore and the reef. Conversely, an atoll is a ring reef with no land present.
Reefs were formed by corals living in shallow depths of water. Darwin's theory set out a sequence of coral reef formation around an extinct volcanic island, becoming an atoll as the island and ocean floor subsided. Courtesy of the US Geological Survey. When the Beagle set out in 1831, the formation of coral atolls was a scientific puzzle.
Ecosystem classifications are specific kinds of ecological classifications that consider all four elements of the definition of ecosystems: a biotic component, an abiotic complex, the interactions between and within them, and the physical space they occupy. Biotic factors of the ecosystem are living things; such as plants, animals, and bacteria ...
A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. [55] Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes but there are also reefs such as the coral reefs of tropical waters formed by biotic processes dominated by corals and coralline algae.
An aquatic ecosystem is an ecosystem found in and around a body of water, in contrast to land-based terrestrial ecosystems.Aquatic ecosystems contain communities of organisms—aquatic life—that are dependent on each other and on their environment.
Abiotic components include physical conditions and non-living resources that affect living organisms in terms of growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Resources are distinguished as substances or objects in the environment required by one organism and consumed or otherwise made unavailable for use by other organisms.
Marine biogenic calcification is the production of calcium carbonate by organisms in the global ocean.. Marine biogenic calcification is the biologically mediated process by which marine organisms produce and deposit calcium carbonate minerals to form skeletal structures or hard tissues.