Morphology Analysis of Niger Delta Shoreline and Estuaries for Ecotourism Potential in Nigeria - The Land/Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone of West and Central Africa - page 106

Morphology Analysis of Niger Delta Shoreline
and Estuaries for Ecotourism Potential
in Nigeria

O. Adeaga

Abstract
Estuaries provide numerous goods and services needed for human development and
socioeconomic sustenance, housing about 60 % of the world's population with highly fragile
natural endowment of luxuriant diverse ecological types. A beneficial link through long-term
biodiversity conservation with local, social, and economic development in estuaries therefore
remains a well-planned ecotourism development. Such development is necessary since
disturbance of the dynamic 'steady state' of estuaries may result in total modification of their
morphology or losing entire ecosystems. This study examines the shoreline morphology of
the Niger Delta and major estuaries for better understanding of the natural forcing within the
estuary systems and their potential for ecotourism development planning and management
beyond the twenty-first century.

Keywords

Morphology Shoreline Estuaries Ecotourism Niger delta

Introduction

Estuaries link marine waters (subtidal and intertidal),
freshwaters, and terrestrial ecosystems and usually contain
wetlands formed at the margins of the land and sea features.
Thus, an estuary functions as a transient open system in a
dynamic 'steady state' through exchanges of energy, water,
and sediment with the surrounding systems (catchment and
open sea). External environmental inputs and the system
constraints therefore change as the estuary develops.
Estuary development involves interplay between its
different components as it attains a dynamic steady state,
with mixing stratification over space and time scales within
the estuary system. The system dynamic pattern therefore
depends on the relationship between accretion, water
movement, and sediment transport, influenced by long-term
average sediment supply transport (from inland or coastal
origin), its characteristics (direction and magnitude), and
abrupt

Natural luxuriant flora and fauna, and the natural resources
of estuaries, commonly found on the numerous sedimentary
coasts around the world, provide numerous goods and ser-
vices needed for human development and socioeconomic
sustenance, housing about 60 % of the world's population.
Estuaries are semi-enclosed coastal bodies of water with
free connection to the open sea within which sea water is
diluted with freshwater derived from land drainage (Prit-
chard 1967 ). These water bodies receive sediments from
both fluvial and marine sources and contain facies influ-
enced by tides, waves, and fluvial processes (Dalrymple
et al. 1992 ), stretching from the sea inlet to the upper limit
of tidal rise influence within river valleys (Fairbridge 1980 ).

changes in the estuarine morphology (Milliman

1991 ; Pethick 1994 ).

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