the plants to inundation. For example, Cord Grass tolerates inun- 

 dation but Salt Grass is intolerant of frequent inundations. 

 Frankenia does not occur in areas inundated by tidal action. It 

 is not surprising that many genera of plants that occur in Coastal 

 Salt Marsh also reappear in saline areas of the desert. Salt Grass 

 and pickleweed have related species in desert regions. 



The area covered by the Coastal Salt Marsh plant community 

 is relatively small, and in CaHfornia is mostly in regions where 

 there are high concentrations of human population. In the San 

 Francisco Bay area, hundreds of acres of salt marsh have been 

 lost by bay-fill projects of various kinds. Likewise, in southern 

 California a number of salt marshes have been reduced in size 

 (or perhaps lost) due to draining and other ecological disturb- 

 ances. If pollution of San Francisco Bay continues to increase, 

 the altered biotic conditions at the periphery of the bay may 

 have a deleterious influence on the Coastal Salt Marsh commun- 

 ity, although these effects have yet to be demonstrated. From a 

 zoological standpoint, this community is valuable because it 

 provides feeding and nesting areas for a large number of resident 

 or migratory water birds. Most efforts at conserving the com- 

 munity have been directed toward the zoological rather than 

 botanical interest of the community, but both merit the atten- 

 tion of conservationists because of their unique qualities. 



Northern Coastal Scrub (Plate 6A;Map 3) 



Continuing in an eastward transect across the coastal portion 

 of northern California, immediately inland from the Coastal 

 Prairie plant community there is another plant community that 

 is dominated by a maritime climate but which differs conspicu- 

 ously from the Coastal Prairie plant community in that shrubs 

 are present. This plant community is the Northern Coastal Scrub, 

 which occupies a narrow and discontinuous strip of land run- 

 ning from the Oregon border south to Santa Cruz County, reap- 

 pearing briefly south of Monterey Bay from Pacific Grove to 

 Point Sur. It lies between the Coastal Prairie and the North 

 Coastal Forest or the Closed-Cone Pine Forest discussed below. 

 The Northern Coastal Scrub is characterized by the presence of 



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