Wash margin

Two successive wash margins (centre and below right) comprising seaweed and eelgrass.

Close-up of wash margin on the beach at Cuxhaven

The strandline at Ringstead Beach, Dorset, United Kingdom

A wash margin or wash fringe (German: Spülsaum) is an area of the shore on which material is deposited or washed up. It often runs along the margin of a waterbody and there can be several bands due to variations in water levels. As a result of the richness of nutrients that occur in such wash fringes, ruderal species frequently occur here, that, for example, on the Baltic Sea coast consist of grassleaf orache and sea kale.

See also

• High water mark
• Intertidal zone

Literature

• Leser, Hartmut, ed. (2005). Wörterbuch Allgemeine Geographie, 13th ed., Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, ISBN 978-3-423-03422-7.

External links

• Information on wash margin vegetation by the Wattenmeer Nature Conservation Station
• What is the STRANDLINE?, durhambiodiversity.org.uk
• Strandline Description (English), eunis.eea.europa.eu
• Soil seed bank and driftline composition along a successional gradient on a temperate salt marsh, bioone.org
• Page 9: "Setting: Intertidal Zones" in: Effects of Coastal Armoring on Sandy Beach Ecosystems, wa.water.usgs.gov