Glossary

Glossary Terms and Definitions

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	Term	Abb	Definition
	Term	Abb	Definition
	abiotic factors		non-living characteristics of a habitat or ecosystem that affect organisms' life processes.
	adaptation		a behavior or physical trait that evolved by natural selection and increases an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce in a specific environment.
	aeration		The process of exposing water to air, allowing air and water to mix and water to absorb the gasses in air.
	aerobic		with air, oxygen.
	algae		a simple, nonflowering, and typically aquatic plant of a large group that includes the seaweeds and many single-celled forms.
	anadromous		fish that live their adult lives in the ocean but move into freshwater streams to reproduce or spawn.
	anerobic		without air, no oxygen.
	anthropogenic		arising from human activity.
	Association of National Estuary Programs	ANEP	Association of National Estuary Programs (ANEP) works with the EPA's National Estuary Program (NEP) to restore and protect estuaries of significant importance.
	backshore		That part of the beach that is usually dry, being reached only by the highest tides, and by extension, a narrow strip of relatively flat coast bordering the sea. The area of a shore that lies between the average high tide mark and the vegetation.
	baffle box		An underground stormwater management device that uses barriers (or baffles) to slow the flow of untreated stormwater, allowing particulates to settle in the box before the stormwater is released into the environment.
	bank		Edge of a cut or fill; the margin of the watercourse; an elevation of the seafloor located on a continental shelf or an island shelf and over which the depth of water is relatively shallow but sufficient for safe surface navigation (reefs or shoals, dangerous to surface navigation may arise above the general depths of a bank).
	bar-built estuary		areas where sandbars form parallel to the shore, partly enclosing the water behind them as the sandbars become islands.
	barrier island		A long, narrow, sandy island that is above high tide and parallel to the shore that commonly has dunes, vegetated zones, and swampy terrains extending lagoonward from the beach.
	Basin Management Action Plan	BMAP	A Basin Management Action Plan, or BMAP, is a comprehensive set of site-specific strategies to reduce or eliminate pollutant loadings and restore particular waterbodies to health.
	bathymetry		Science of measuring water depths (usually in the ocean) in order to determine bottom topography. Bathymetry is the study of the "beds" or "floors" of water bodies, including the ocean, rivers, streams, and lakes.
	beach berm		Nearly horizontal portion of the beach or backshore formed by the deposit of materials by wave action. Some beaches have no berms, others have one or several.
	beach		Zone of unconsolidated material that extends landward from the low water line to the place where there is marked changes in material or physiographic form, or to the line of permanent vegetation (usually the effective limit of storm waves). A beach includes foreshore and backshore.
	benthos		bottom-dwelling flora and fauna; from tiniest microbenthos (bacteria) to medium-sized meiobenthos (nematode worms) to the highly visible macrobenthos (clams, polychaete worms).
	berm		Nearly horizontal portion of a beach or backshore having an abrupt fall and formed by wave deposition of material and marking the limit of ordinary high tides.
	biodiversity		the number and variety of living things in an environment.
	biofilter		living material or an organism that captures and biologically degrades pollutants.
	biogeochemical		relating to or denoting the cycle in which chemical elements and simple substances are transferred between living systems and the environment.
	biosphere		the part of the world in which life can exist; living organisms and their environment.
	biota		the animal and plant life of a particular region, habitat, or geological period.

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