All of the diagrams to know for the exam
Seafloor features
Water Cycle
Surface Currents (5)
Wave (4)
Coastal Zone Subsystems (3) – the whole thing is the coastal zone – the “sandwich” – the ocean (marine subsystem) and the land (the terrestrial subsystem) are the bread of the sandwich and the coastal subsystem is the filling in the sandwich. It might be a rocky shore sandwich or a sandy beach sandwich. The high and low tide marks show why it is so hard to live on the rocky shore – because sometimes the coastal subsystem is covered by water (high tide) and sometimes it is dry or moist (low tide)
Tidal Zones
Supralittoral is also called supratidal (as well as splash zone or spray zone). If you compare this to the diagram of the benthic provinces you will see the two bottom zones from this diagram – the littoral zone and sublittoral zone. Remember – supra means ‘above’ (think about Superman flying) and sub means below (think of submarine)
Ocean Zones by light – look at the smaller rectangular box on the far right for light zones
- photic (top layer, light penetrates)
- dysphotic (middle, also called twilight zone. Light penetrates but not enough for photosynthesis to take place
- aphotic (bottom layer, ‘without’ light)
**** often it is simplified and just called photic and aphotic. Oceanographers like to add ‘dysphotic’ because there is not actually a clean line between photic and aphotic – there is (literally) a grey area in between.
Ocean Zones by depth (the Pelagic Provinces)
– epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathypelagic, abbysalpelagic and hadalpelagic.
Pelagic means ‘open ocean’ and refers to the actual water column by depth.
You also see these in a very similar form called the benthic provinces
- littoral, sublittoral, bathyal, abyssal, hadal – these refer to the LAND under the water, also by DEPTH. If you look on the diagram you can see that the labels are on the “land” part (even though most of it is underwater)
-