Seventh Week (September 20th to September 24th).

This week we had the science oral presentations and my topic was "Intertidal Zones".

Intertidal Zones

Intertidal zones.

Intertidal or littoral zones make up the coasts around the world; this biome is located where the sandy beaches meet the sea between the high and low tide zones, these rocky shores are exposed and submerged by the tides at least twice a day, depending on where the coast is affects the temperature of air and water in the biome. Coast lines that are in the tropics are warmer, whereas arctic coast have cold water and air, the shape of the coast affects the intensity of the waves, the straight lined coasts are hit more intensely by the water, but rounded coasts, made of bays are usually calmer and the water isn´t as rough at high tide.

The intertidal zones can be broken out into 4 zones:

The upper littoral zone also called the splash zone is only flooded during high tide and its exposed to the sun for the rest, hardly any vegetation grows here.

The upper-mid littoral zone is equally submerged and exposed for making temperatures less extreme, however wave action is more extreme and more vegetation such as seaweed grows here.

The lower-mid littoral zone is where most vegetation grows, there’s more energy in here and the water coverage allows for sufficient light for plant growing.

The lower littoral zone however is where larger organisms start to appear that can only leave in water and feed on the secondary consumers.

The intertidal region is an important model system for the study of ecology. The region contains a high diversity of species, and the different zones ranges are compressed into very narrow bands. This makes it simple to study species across their entire cross-shore range, something that can be extremely difficult