Data base development for coastal ecosystems: A model

Abstract

Coastal areas can be regarded as the interface between three habitat media-land, air and sea. These areas contain three obvious habitats namely: (1) maritime zone-a home for many terrestrial animals and plants, (2) sea itself, and (3) an intertidal or littoral zone at the sea-land interface with a specialised flora and fauna. In the littoral zones-where marine sediments and soil meets -a specialised community of terrestrial halophytic plants and associated animals develop. Two of the most characteristic coastal communities of this nature are: (1) salt marshes found mainly in temperature to sub-polar climates, and (2) mangrove swamps-of tropical to sub-tropical occurrence. The term 'mangrove' has been used to describe both an ecological group of flowering halophytic shrubs and trees (upto 30 m high) belonging to several unrelated families, genera, complete community or association of plants which fringe sheltered tropical shores. Such swamps are inhabitEd. by a variety of terrestrial animals including insects, birds, etc. The complex root systems of plants provide suitable habitats for many marine crustaceans, fishes apart from growth of filamentous algae on the substratum giving rise to complex ecosystem. These habitats are studiEd. by specialists from variety of basic disciplines. They collect data pertaining to their interest thereby giving rise to a large amount of information requiring careful, efficient management for future use. This information is mainly available in the form of documents like books, reports, journal articles, etc. and hence called 'documentary sources'. Students, R and D community are the main users of these sources. However, the process does not end here. The generators of such documentary information sources themselves become nondocumentary sources of information having large concern for policy makers and management personnel. Information about various institutions involved in such king of studies, different projects apart from personnel themselves form part of the non-documentary sources of information. These exists other form of equally important information : the resources data itself. Their availability, distribution, ecology, classification, economic importance, social implications, etc., is of interest to both, researchers and policy makers. The contemporary technologies help in archieving this information in the form of data base(s) for their efficient retrieval and use. Several experiments are being carried out in this line.