Essential Islands
Objective
- Gulf Map
Vocabulary
- barrier island
- ecology
- mainland
Background
Coastal barriers, especially islands, perform several functions essential to human and natural communities. As dynamic systems of sand and sediment, their only constant is that of change. The forces of wind, waves, and storms carve the barrier beaches and build protective dunes. Dunes, however, can be diminished by processes that kill their anchoring plant life or otherwise trample their transient sediment.
Procedure
Rank the following barrier island functions, numbering them one (most important) through ten (least important) in the left-hand blank. Place a dollar sign in the right-hand blank if the function is economically important. Write ECO in the same blank if the function is an ecological necessity. Record the reasons for your choices.
____ Tourism benefits to communities ____
____ Protection of the mainland from the destructive nature of the storm tides and waves ____
____ Retirement communities ____
____ Enclosing and forming bays, marshes, and estuaries ____
____ Recreation--fishing, hunting, boating, surfing, birdwatching, photography, etc. ____
____ Creation of habitat for commercial and recreational fishes and shellfish ____
____ Wintering habitat for commercial and recreational fishes and shellfish ____
____ Wintering habitat for waterfowl ____
____ Nest sites for endangered and threatened species including whooping cranes and sea turtles____
____ Habitat for migratory birds, shorebirds, and colonial waterbirds ____
____ Creation of habitat for furbearing mammals ____