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Salt marsh during low tide, mean low tide, high tide and very high tide (spring tide). A coastal salt marsh in Perry, Florida, USA.. A salt marsh, saltmarsh or salting, also known as a coastal salt marsh or a tidal marsh, is a coastal ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and open saltwater or brackish water that is regularly flooded by the tides.
Inland salt marshes are quite rare and have unique conservation needs, yet there is a severe lack of research on these ecosystems. Protected by the European Natura 2000 network [ 8 ] and classified as a G1 category endangered ecosystem, [ 1 ] there is a strong need to protect these rare, decreasing ecosystems, yet a lack of available research ...
Salt marshes are dominated by specially adapted rooted vegetation, primarily salt-tolerant grasses. [8] Salt marshes are most commonly found in lagoons, estuaries, and on the sheltered side of a shingle or sandspit. The currents there carry the fine particles around to the quiet side of the spit, and sediment begins to build up.
Tidal salt marsh at Ella Nore in Chichester, England. A tidal marsh (also known as a type of "tidal wetland") is a marsh found along rivers, coasts and estuaries which floods and drains by the tidal movement of the adjacent estuary, sea or ocean. [1]
Salt marshes can be generally divided into the high marsh, low marsh, and the upland border. The low marsh is closer to the ocean, with it being flooded at nearly every tide except low tide. [53] The high marsh is located between the low marsh and the upland border and it usually only flooded when higher than usual tides are present. [53]
Low marsh is a tidal marsh zone located below the Mean Highwater Mark (MHM). Based on elevation, frequency of submersion, soil characteristics, vegetation, microbial community, and other metrics, salt marshes can be divided to into three distinct areas: low marsh, middle marsh/high marsh, and the upland zone. [1]
Brackish marshes develop from salt marshes where a significant freshwater influx dilutes the seawater to brackish levels of salinity. This commonly happens upstream from salt marshes by estuaries of coastal rivers or near the mouths of coastal rivers with heavy freshwater discharges in the conditions of low tidal ranges .
Salt marsh showing salt pannes and ponds, spartina alternifolia and invasive phragmites communis in foreground. Brackish marsh panne variants occur in brackish marshes (short graminoid variant), one of the native dominant species is spike grass (Distichlis spicata), some brackish marsh pannes are dominated by the narrow-leaved cattail (Typha angustifolia) an invasive exotic species.