Salt marshes and tidal flats
Salt marshes are grassy tidal wetlands in cooler or drier coasts; in Atlas, "sand and mudflats" are the bare areas between and behind mangroves.
Salt marshes are tidal wetlands dominated by salt-tolerant grasses and shrubs. They are the temperate and sub-tropical cousin of mangroves and are an important blue-carbon habitat in places such as North Africa and South Africa.
Tidal flats are bare sand or mud exposed at low tide. They are not vegetation, but they are vital feeding grounds for wading birds and mark where mangroves could expand.
In Atlas. The Lamu dataset contains about 28,000 polygons of sand and mudflats next to the mangrove, which lets Atlas compare how much bare flat lies beside the forest. The global salt-marsh dataset (UNEP-WCMC) is catalogued to be loaded later.
Related reading
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- East African and Indian Ocean mangroves
- Scenarios are not forecasts
- Mangrove zonation: why different species grow in bands
- Seagrass meadows: blue carbon's quiet partner
- How mangrove restoration works (and fails)
- Who manages mangroves in Kenya?
- Why mangroves matter
- Organisations and community involvement in carbon projects
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