What Is Continental Shelf Ecosystems

An ecosystem can be categorized into its abiotic constituents including minerals climate soil water and sunlight and its biotic constituents consisting of all living members.

What is continental shelf ecosystems.

A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water known as a shelf sea. This article describes the habitat of the continental shelf. Ecosystem the complex of living organisms their physical environment and all their interrelationships in a particular unit of space. Almost all life on earth relies on photosynthetic organisms such as plants and algae.

Much of these shelves has been exposed during glacial periods and interglacial periods the shelf surrounding an island is known as an insular shelf. A continental shelf extends from the coastline of a continent to a drop off point called the shelf break from the break the shelf descends toward the deep ocean floor in what is called the continental slope. A continental shelf is the edge of a continent that lies under the ocean continents are the seven main divisions of land on earth. The continental margin between the continental shelf and the abyssal plain comprises a steep continental slope.

Trophic cascades are most common and clearly evident in low diversity benthic marine ecosystems 8 9 whereas top down consumer driven effects in benthic food webs are widely accepted their application to large pelagic marine ecosystems is more contentious. The delicate ecosystem of the continental shelf is constantly studied and monitored by thousands of marine biologists around the world. Even though they are underwater continental shelves are. Continental shelf large marine ecosystem nes lme and their importance in developing ecosystem based fisheries management for this region.

This effort is being made in order acquire more knowledge on the shelf in order to not only increase the nation s economic growth but to also make more. Continental shelf ecosystem microscopic single celled algae known as phytoplankton are responsible for nearly all primary production globally primary producers generate almost half of earth s oxygen and are the base of most marine food webs. Continental margin environments including estuarine salt marsh mangrove forest coral reef continental shelf and continental slope ecosystems are the interface zone between oceanic and terrestrial realms with gateways also to the atmosphere and solid earth sediment reservoirs. In the northeast u s.

It is one of the sub categories within the section dealing with biodiversity of marine habitats and ecosystems it gives an overview about the characteristics processes such as sedimentation and biota. Since 2003 the united states extended continental shelf project has been working to determine the geographical end of america s continental shelf past the 200 nautical miles outlined in the legal boundary.