Chapter 2: Classification of Marine Environments

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The classification and terminology presented in Figure 1 are results of several years of discussion by the Committee. Every attempt was made to develop a scheme acceptable to as many workers as possible and which would not upset well-established usages. Our first attempt was compiled on the basis of a questionnaire which included an original diagram by Siemon W. Muller (which has been expanded as Fig. 2). There were more than 20 replies to this questionnaire, and the preliminary classification was published in Annual Report No. 9 of the Committee (Ladd et al., 1949). A second version, attempting to answer later criticisms and suggestions, appeared in Annual Report No. 11 (Ladd et al., 1951). These preliminary versions have already found their way into textbooks and special papers, although some of the earlier terms were subsequently abandoned, as indicated in the following discussion.1 As our knowledge of the sea and its life develops, the terminology employed to describe the environment and its life increases in complexity. The efforts of many workers, often in apparently unrelated fields, to apply old terms or invent new ones for specific situations have resulted in duplications, overlapping, and conflicting meanings. The term littoral, for example, has been used to mean the region between high-tide and low-tide levels (the “space between tidemarks” in the words of Forbes and Hanley, 1853, who seem to have been the first to define the word in this sense), the region between the shore and somewhere between 20–50 fathoms, or the...

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: