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estuary

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estuary

1. the widening channel of a river where it nears the sea, with a mixing of fresh water and salt (tidal) water
2. an inlet of the sea
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

estuary

[′es·chə ‚wer·ē]
(geography)
A semienclosed coastal body of water which has a free connection with the open sea and within which sea water is measurably diluted with fresh water. Also known as branching bay; drowned river mouth; firth.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Estuary

 

a single-channel, funnel-shaped seaward end of a river that widens toward the sea. Estuaries form in cases where the sediment carried by the river is removed by sea currents or tidal movements and the adjacent part of the sea is very deep. In such cases no sediment is deposited at the mouth, even if the sediment load is large. The Enisei and the Thames are two of the many rivers that have estuaries.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Kene who took journalists on a tour of the estuary on Saturday said a donor had already been identified and was willing to construct the wall or set up a solar-powered electric fence.
Emily said: "People are at the heart of this exciting new project, which not only celebrates the incredible wildlife of the Dee Estuary but also creates opportunities for local people to play their part in securing its future.
Graham Jones, RSPB Dee Estuary site manager, said: "I started coming to Parkgate as a teenager in the 1980s to watch the birds that thrive on the marsh and mud.
As I walked round the estuary at low tide, I looked to see what birds and animals were present and made drawings of the area.
The three major orders of planktonic copepods (calanoida, cyclopoida and harpacticoida) demonstrated different roles along the estuary. Although all three orders of copepods had similar diversity, cyclopoida numerical density was considerably higher (Table IV).
All of the mixing and pushing and pulling of the tides smooths out the transition from seawater at the mouth of the estuary to fresh water at the head of the estuary.
IDRIS JONES: I never tire of looking at the Dwyryd Estuary from Portmeirion; the changing moods and colours give it a personality of its own.
* To assess the environmental conditions of the Meghna River Estuary and the Bakkhali River Estuary.
In this paper, the aforementioned themes are studied, enabling a better understanding of the Tina Menor estuary and including the synthesis of the dynamic and sedimentary processes through the elaboration of a simplified model.
Therefore, it is not clear to what extent the current models can be used to make predictions regarding tropical estuaries (Costa et al., 2003), particularly the irregular ones, and plant zonation along tropical estuary tidal gradients is one of the larger gaps in our knowledge about costal environments (Crain et al., 2004).
It has been created to compensate for the loss of natural habitat from construction of the new Redcar coastal flood defences and planned flood defences on the Tees Estuary.
The first phase of Estuary's leasing program will be to accept interest from prospective residents by phone or online.
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