Bays

Gulf of Maine

Coastal Zone

Atlantic

The water cycle includes the flow of both fresh and salt water. Flowing through the land, fresh water dissolves minerals from the soil and carries them to the ocean. When water evaporates from the surface of the ocean, the minerals are left behind, slowly increasing their concentration, making the oceans salty. Salt waters are often referred to as marine waters, from mare, the Latin word for ocean.

About seventy percent of the Earth's surface is covered with salt water.

Fresh water can fall directly into salt water as some form of precipitation, flow into salt water through an estuary, or perhaps seep directly from the shore into the ocean. In these pages, the flow is seen as going by a series of steps from shoreline areas into bays, into the Gulf of Maine, into the Atlantic coastal zone, and finally into the Atlantic Ocean, from which it eventually evaporates into the atmosphere.