What long-term damage has been done to local ecosystems ?
Immediate damage is variable. In some areas, salt, sediment and debris deposits, and the uprooting of trees and bushes etc.. have profoundly damaged the continental side of the coastal ecosystems. The salt and bio-chemical balance of the lagoons has been completely changed. Flora and wildlife will be particularly affected, and it will take years to recover their pre-disaster capacity. Coastal aquatic ecosystems have also been damaged to a variable extent. Sandy-mud ecosystems and estuaries may have suffered less. Coral reefs have been seriously damaged in some areas, particularly the very superficial ones. In other areas, they have been practically unaffected. There are reports of reefs covered with sand (e.g. from India ). But the global assessment of the long-term consequences of this damage to ecosystems has not yet been carried out, given that the urgency was to address damage to sea fisheries and agriculture. The most likely assumption is that, except in some hardly hit superficia
