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Water clarity is one way that humans measure water quality, along with oxygen concentration and the presence or absence of pollutants and algal blooms. [1] Water clarity governs the health of underwater ecosystems because it impacts the amount of light reaching the plants and animals living underwater. For plants, light is needed for ...
Connectivity between streams and lakes relates to the landscape drainage density, lake surface area and lake shape. [15] Other types of aquatic systems which fall within the study of limnology are estuaries. Estuaries are bodies of water classified by the interaction of a river and the ocean or sea. [13]
Water forms the ocean, produces the high density fluid environment and greatly affects the oceanic organisms. Sea water produces buoyancy and provides support for plants and animals. That's the reason why in the ocean organisms can be that huge like the blue whale and macrophytes. And the densities or rigidities of the oceanic organisms are ...
Light, water depth, and substrate types are the most important factors controlling the distribution of submerged aquatic plants. [10] Macrophytes are sources of food, oxygen, and habitat structure in the benthic zone, but cannot penetrate the depths of the euphotic zone, and hence are not found there.
Ocean optics is the study of how light interacts with water and the materials in water. Although research often focuses on the sea, the field broadly includes rivers, lakes, inland waters, coastal waters, and large ocean basins. How light acts in water is critical to how ecosystems function underwater.
Depending on how it is defined, the aphotic zone of the ocean begins between depths of about 200 m (660 ft) to 800 m (2,600 ft) and extends to the ocean floor. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] The majority of the ocean is aphotic, with the average depth of the sea being 4,267 m (13,999 ft) deep; the deepest part of the sea, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana ...
From shallow waters to the deep sea, the open ocean to rivers and lakes, numerous terrestrial and marine species depend on the surface ecosystem and the organisms found there. [1] The ocean's surface acts like a skin between the atmosphere above and the water below, and hosts an ecosystem unique to this environment.
The ocean represents the largest continuous planetary ecosystem, hosting an enormous variety of organisms, which include microscopic biota such as unicellular eukaryotes (protists). Despite their small size, protists play key roles in marine biogeochemical cycles and harbour tremendous evolutionary diversity.