Productivity • Invertebrates • Birds
Fish • Amphibians • Mammals

Saltmarshes are important and productive ecosystems, exporting large quantities of carbon and energy into the water column. They provide an essential resource for wading birds and wildfowl and they act as high tide refuges for birds feeding on adjacent mudflats, as breeding sites for waders, gulls and terns and as a source of food for passerine birds, particularly in autumn and winter. In winter, grazed saltmarshes are used as feeding grounds by large flocks of wild ducks and geese.

Areas with high structural and plant diversity, (for example where freshwater seepages provide a transition from fresh to brackish conditions), are particularly important for invertebrates and saltmarshes also provide sheltered nursery sites and refuges for several species of fish. The following pages discuss these topics in more detail.

Click on the links above for further information on Saltmarsh as Ecosystems