CHAPTER 7. SUMMARY 



The estuarine zone is an ecosystem. That is, it is an environment of 

 land, water, and air inhabited by plants and animals that have specific 

 relationships to each other. This particular ecosystem is the interface 

 between land and ocean, and one of its key components is human 

 society. 



The social and economic environment that forms human society must 

 be regulated by manmade laws intended to provide justice to each indi- 

 vidual 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 less flexible than manmade laws. 

 The welfare of American society now demands that manmade laws 

 be extended to regulate the impact of man on the biophysical environ- 

 ment so that the national estuarine zone can be preserved, developed, 

 and used for the continuing benefit of the citizens of the United States. 



To apply manmade laws and regulations to the natural estuarine 

 environment, it is necessary first to understand what natural condi- 

 tions govern that environment, and then to understand how the socio- 

 economic and biophysical environments affect each other. Only then 

 can there be developed an institutional environment which can effec- 

 tively weld all three environments into one smoothly functioning self- 

 sustaining ecosystem. 



Section 1. The Biophysical Environment 



Laws regulating the socioeconomic environment exist at several lev- 

 els of governmental authority. The Constitution presents general guid- 

 ing principles. State constitutions operate within this framework 

 while establishing a more detailed body of law designed to satisfy the 

 needs of the statewide socioeconomic environment, and local ordinances 

 regulate in detail the activities carried out in specific locations. 



The biophysical environment is also subject to a hierarchy of laws, 

 regulations, and conditions. The general guiding principles are those 

 fundamental natural laws which govern all life on the earth ; at the 

 interfacial zone between land and sea the effects of these laws appear 

 as universal dominating environmental factors. The structure of the 

 coastline, formed and modified in obedience to these general conditions, 

 imposes a second level of natural law which exerts its primary efl'ects 

 on water movement in the estuarine zone ; and, within each structural 

 form exists a host of organisms living according to specific natural 

 ordinances which govern their relationships. 



DOMINATING ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS 



The natural estuarine environment is based on the conversion of 

 radiant solar energy into other forms of energy with the assistance 

 of the mechanical effects of gravitational energy. This conversion is 

 accomplished by an intricate array of prey-predator relationships 



(313) 



