accumulators: plants able to absorb salts and drop leaves with accumulated salt. Pickleweed is a type of accumulator.

brackish: a mixture of fresh and salt water.

community: all the plants and animals in a particular habitat that are bound together by the food chain and other interrelationships.

decomposers: living plants and animals, fungi and bacteria that live by extracting energy from the decaying tissues of dead plants and animals.

erosion: loss of soil due to water flow, especially in areas where native vegetation has been removed.

estuary: a semi-enclosed body of water where a river meets an ocean, mixing fresh water and sea water.

excluders: plants with an ability to exclude salt from tissues. Jaumea, better known as salty Susan or salt marsh daisy, is a type of excluder.

excreters: plants able to excrete salts from tissues. Sea lavender is a type of excreter.

flyways: routes followed by migrating birds.

food chain: the passage of energy and materials in the form of food from producers (green plants) through a succession of plant-eating and meat-eating consumers.

food web: system of interlocking food chains.

freshwater marsh: an upstream wetland that is not affected by tidal action.

halophyte: plant with the ability to live in salty soils.

littoral: the area affected by the rise and fall of the tides.

marine: having to do with the ocean.

riparian: a riverbank ecosystem surrounding a water drainage system (such as a river or stream) that flows toward the sea.

salt marsh: an intertidal wetland that is found in sheltered coastal areas and estuaries.

scavenger: an animal that eats dead remains and waste of other animals and plants.

upland: the inland origin of a watershed.

vernal pool: a seasonal wetland area that is dry and largely uninhabited for much of the year, until rains arrive and fill it with water; it teems with life again.

water table: the upper level of the underground reservoir of water.

watershed: the land area drained by a stream system. The endpoint of a watershed is a coastal wetland, where the stream system reaches the sea.