II-l 



The estuarine zone is an ecosvstem. That is, it is an environment 

 of land, water, and air inhabited by nlants and animals that have 

 specific relationships to each other. This particular ecosystem 

 is the interface between land and ocean, and one of its key compo- 

 nents is human societv. 



The social and economic environment that forms human society must 

 be regulated by man-made laws intended to provide justice to each 

 individual and part of the socioeconomic environment. The biological 

 and physical environment of the estuarine zone, in contrast, obeys 

 natural laws which are equally complex and are less flexible than 

 man-made laws. The welfare of American societv now demands that 

 man-made laws be extended to reaulate the imoact of man on the bio- 

 physical environment so that the national estuarine zone can be 

 preserved, developed, and used for the continuinq benefit of the 

 citizens of the United States. 



To apply man-made laws and requlations to the natural estuarine 

 environment, it is necessarv first to understand what natural 

 conditions qovern that environment, and then to understand how the 

 socioeconomic and biophysical environments affect each other. Only 

 then can there be developed an institutional environment which can 

 effectively weld all three environments into one smoothly functioning 

 self-sustaininq ecosvstem. 



