Estuary
A tidal river mouth where fresh water and salt water mix, buffered from open-sea wave energy — diagnostic features are mudflats or marsh grass rather than a clean sand or rock shoreline, braided or meandering low-energy channels rather than the constant single flow of a river proper, and a visible tidal range exposing and covering ground on a cycle rather than a fixed waterline.
Wetland / Marsh / Fen
A tidal river mouth with mudflats and marsh grass, braided low-energy channels rather than a single strong current.
Temperate
Setting: Coastal
Candidate: The Severn Estuary, England — unverified, for your own research and confirmation before use.
Arctic / Subarctic
Setting: Coastal
Candidate: The Gulf of Ob, Russia — unverified, for your own research and confirmation before use.
| A funnel-shaped gulf rather than a branching delta — the Ob (and, further east, the Yenisei) discharges into a long, wide inlet of the Kara Sea, not distributary channels; the hydrology literature explicitly classifies Arctic river mouths as either delta or non-delta type, and this is the non-delta type, which is exactly why it belongs here rather than on the Delta page alongside the genuinely deltaic Lena. |
Bare Rock / Non-Vegetated
A tidal, rocky-shored inlet where a river meets the sea, steep ground rather than mudflats.
Temperate
Setting: Coastal
Candidate: Loch Etive, a sea loch, Scotland — unverified, for your own research and confirmation before use.
| A sea loch is estuary-like (tidal, river-fed, sea-connected) but genuinely rocky-shored rather than mudflat-dominated — worth confirming this reads as the intended variant, not a fjord. |