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Definition English:
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Mangrove swamp is an easily recognized habitat along tropical and subtropical coastlines and brackish estuaries and deltas, where evergreen trees and shrubs thrive in tideland mud or sand flats inundated daily with sea water. These flats are found mostly along bays and inlets protected from heavy waves. Some coral reefs on islands can support mangal in relatively high energy environments. The plant community of a mangrove swamp is most commonly termed mangal, a forest with a dense canopy, also own as mangrove swamp forest or, simply, mangrove. Although mangal occurs along more than two-thirds of all saltwater tropical coastlines, parallel to the shoreline, this is a very narrow, fringing forest, and, hence, less than one-tenth of one percent of the earth's surface is inhabited by mangal. (UCLA: Marine and Estuarine Wetlands - http://www.LIFESCI.ucla.edu/botgard/html/botanytextbooks/worldvegetation/marinewetlands/mangal/). Tideland: Low coastal land partly under sea water, at least at high tide, and possessing special ecological characteristics (Material V - Gunn, S.W.A. Multilingual Dictionary of Disaster Medicine and International Relief, 1990) |