Ramsar logoThe Ramsar Convention on Wetlands

Coastal Ramsar Sites: an Overview

[this information is now out of date]

The Ramsar Database is maintained under contract to the Convention by Wetlands International - AEME in the Netherlands.  In response to a recent request from the Ramsar Bureau for information about coastal Ramsar sites and the types of wetlands found within them, which was needed for a report we were working on, Database Assistant Edith Hubert, in the absence of Scott Frazier, the Ramsar/Wetland Sites Officer, produced this brief tabulation which may be of much wider interest as well.  The Wetland Types in the second table are keyed to Ramsar's Classification System for Wetland Type, as approved by Recommendation 4.7 (1990) and later amended (1996).

An Overview of Wetland Types at Coastal Ramsar Sites

14 July 1998

Currently there are 931 Ramsar sites. Of those, 436 are listed as coastal. The coastal Ramsar sites can be found in 75 of the 112 Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention. The CP’s which have coastal sites are listed below:

Albania Gambia New Zealand
Argentina Georgia Norway
Australia Germany Panama
Bahamas Ghana Papua New Guinea
Bahrain Greece Peru
Bangladesh Guatemala Philippines
Belgium Guinea-Bissau Poland
Belize Guinea Portugal
Brazil Honduras Romania
Bulgaria Iceland Russian Federation
Canada India Senegal
Chile Indonesia Slovenia
China Iran, Islamic Republic of South Africa
Colombia Ireland Spain
Congo, Democratic Republic of Italy Sri Lanka
Costa Rica Japan Suriname
Côte d’Ivoire Latvia Sweden
Croatia Lithuania Trinidad & Tobago
Denmark Malta Turkey
Ecuador Mauritania Ukraine
Egypt Mexico United Kingdom
Estonia Monaco United States of America
Finland Morocco Uruguay
France Namibia Venezuela
Gabon Netherlands Viet Nam

For 2 of the 436 coastal Ramsar sites, there is no further information about wetland types available. The other 434 sites have an average of more than 5 wetland types per site. A list of the Ramsar wetland types recorded at coastal Ramsar sites is given below (cf. Classification System for Wetland Type for the type codes)..

 

Type

Records

Type

Records

Type

Records

A

172

O

50

Zg

0

B

64

P

21

Zk

0

C

16

Q

38

1

11

D

79

R

15

2

5

E

242

Ss

32

3

19

F

179

Sp

94

4

30

G

215

Ts

63

5

27

H

197

Tp

117

6

11

I

74

U

32

7

3

J

153

V

17

8

0

K

58

W

27

9

38

L

26

Xf

44

0

0

M

118

Xp

6

 . .

N

32

Y

15

 . .

Edith Hubert
Database Assistant
Wetlands International
hubert@wetlands.agro.nl

For further information about the Ramsar Convention, please contact the Ramsar Convention Bureau, Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland (tel +41 22 999 0170, fax +41 22 999 0169, e-mail ramsar@hq.iucn.org). Posted 17 July 1998, Dwight Peck, Ramsar.

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