15 - Saltmarshes, salt steppes, salt scrubs

Classification des habitats du Paléarctique (2001)

Description

Communities of phanerogamic plants, for the most part halophytes, colonizing sites submerged by high tides at some stage of the annual tidal cycle of oceans and their connected seas. Similar halophyte communities colonizing the fringes and emersed beds of inland permanent or temporary saline, hypersaline or brackish waterbodies, including inland closed seas, lakes, pools, sebkhas, rivers, springs, seeps. By extension, azonal, strongly differentiated, communities developing on habitually dry, alkali, chlorid or gypseous soils of the nemoral, middle Eurasian steppe, Irano-Anatolian, Mediterranean, Saharo-Mediterranean and Macaronesian zones. Zonal communities of the desert and semidesert areas, composed, to varying degrees, of halophytes or gypsophytes, are listed under 7. Some saline communities with strong physionognimic similarity to fresh water ones into which they may merge, have been listed in other sections, together with their freshwater counterparts; it is the case in particular of saline tamarisk stands (44.83 ff.) and of tall helophyte beds (53). More generally, halophile forests and their related thickets have been listed with other forests under 4; in particular mangrove forests and thickets are in 4C.

Bibliographie

Devillers P., Devillers-Terschuren J. & Vander Linden C., 2001. PHYSIS Palaearctic Habitat Classification Database. Updated to 10 December 2001. Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles, Bruxelles. (Source)

Chapman, 1975, 1977a, 1977b; Steers, 1977; Walter, 1977; Phleger, 1977; Daiber, 1977; Beeftink, 1977; Zahran, 1977; Hosokawa & al., 1977; Daubenmire, 1978; Walter and Breckle, 1986, 1991b, 1991c; Adam, 1990; Denny, 1993a; Britton and Crivelli, 1993; Glooschenko & al., 1993; Bliss, 1993; Cramer, 1993; Pott, 1996.