Journal of Coastal Zone Management

Coastal Region/ Coastal Area

Coastal areas are commonly defined as the interface or transition areas between land and sea, including large inland lakes. Coastal areas are diverse in function and form, dynamic and do not lend themselves well to definition by strict spatial boundaries. Unlike watersheds, there are no exact natural boundaries that unambiguously delineate coastal areas. Geologically, continental margins are of two types: active margins where the edge of a continent happens to be at the edge of an oceanic plate and inactive margins where the transition from continental lithosphere to oceanic lithosphere is within a plate rather than at a plate edge.