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What is a estuary simple definition?
An estuary is a partially enclosed, coastal water body where freshwater from rivers and streams mixes with salt water from the ocean. Estuaries, and their surrounding lands, are places of transition from land to sea.
What is an example of an estuary?
Other examples of coastal plain estuaries include the Hudson River in New York, Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, the Thames River in England, the Ems River in Germany, the Seine River in France, the Si-Kiang River in Hong Kong, and the Murray River in Australia.
What is the difference between a river and an estuary?
is that river is a large and often winding stream which drains a land mass, carrying water down from higher areas to a lower point, ending at an ocean or in an inland sea or river can be one who rives or splits while estuary is coastal water body where ocean tides and river water merge.
What is estuaries in geography?
Estuary is an area where salt water of sea mixes with fresh water of rivers. Estuary: It is formed by a tidal bore, which ablates the riverbed and carries the silt out to sea. Delta: When rivers drain its water into sea or any other watercourse along with sediment at the mouth of the river.
Can you describe an estuary?
An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and through it, into the open sea. Normally, estuaries form a transition zone between river and marine environments.
Where are estuary found?
Estuaries and their surrounding wetlands are bodies of water usually found where rivers meet the sea. Estuaries are home to unique plant and animal communities that have adapted to brackish water—a mixture of fresh water draining from the land and salty seawater.
What are the types of estuary?
There are four different kinds of estuaries, each created a different way: 1) coastal plain estuaries; 2) tectonic estuaries; 3) bar-built estuaries; and 4) fjord estuaries. Coastal plain estuaries (1) are created when sea levels rise and fill in an existing river valley.
Which best describes the water in an estuary?
An estuary is an area where a freshwater river or stream meets the ocean. In estuaries, the salty ocean mixes with a freshwater river, resulting in brackish water. Brackish water is somewhat salty, but not as salty as the ocean. An estuary may also be called a bay, lagoon, sound, or slough.
How do estuaries work?
An estuary is an area where a freshwater river or stream meets the ocean. In estuaries, the salty ocean mixes with a freshwater river, resulting in brackish water. Brackish water is somewhat salty, but not as salty as the ocean. Water continually circulates into and out of an estuary.
What animals live in estuaries?
Common animals include: shore and sea birds, fish, crabs, lobsters, clams, and other shellfish, marine worms, raccoons, opossums, skunks and lots of reptiles.
What are the two main types of estuary?
The four basic types of estuaries are (1) the salt wedge estuary, (2) the partially mixed (or slightly stratified) estuary, (3) the vertically homogeneous (or vertically mixed) estuary, and (4) the fjord (or highly stratified estuary).
What is the difference between an estuary and an ocean?
As nouns the difference between ocean and estuary is that ocean is (countable) one of the five large bodies of water separating the continents while estuary is coastal water body where ocean tides and river water merge.
What does an estuary look like?
Fjord -type estuaries are formed in deeply eroded valleys formed by glaciers. These U-shaped estuaries typically have steep sides, rock bottoms, and underwater sills contoured by glacial movement. The estuary is shallowest at its mouth, where terminal glacial moraines or rock bars form sills that restrict water flow.
What river is actually an estuary?
The Hudson River is not your typical river. In fact, most of the Hudson is actually a tidal estuary where salt water from the ocean combines with freshwater from northern tributaries. This “brackish”, or mixing, water extends from the mouth of the Hudson in NY Harbor to the Federal Dam in Troy, approximately 153 miles.
What are facts about estuaries?
and sunlight reaches all levels of the water.