Definition
In the vernacular, “littoral” refers to a shore or coastal region from the Latin litus, shore. In the technical usage, “littoral” and its associated derivative nomenclature are variously defined primarily depending on the disciplinary context. Even within a discipline, the terms tend to be used with some elasticity and in a semi-quantitative sense due to the quantitative imprecision of boundaries defined by “high tide” or “low tide,” “ordinary surf,” etc. or by primary and secondary biotic transitions (Fig. 1).
Vertical boundaries for various usage of “littoral” and its derivatives
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Bokuniewicz, H. (2018). Littoral. In: Finkl, C., Makowski, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Coastal Science . Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48657-4_195-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48657-4_195-2
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