While hurricanes aren't likely to entirely remove the wetlands, they are able to do significant damage. Their powerful winds, rainfall and rushing floodwater can do enough harm to permanently remove land. The pounding surf can break down marshes' soft sediments and thick mats of dead grass, which are pliable and easily reshaped. Sometimes channels of fast-moving water flow to inland areas, which never again dry up - contributing to permanent land loss. Rushing wind and water can compact or move mats of grass and mud, while carrying smaller clumps of dead marsh plants to interior marshes or shorelines. And when saltwater floods into freshwater marshes, the wetland plants and animals can undergo temporary or long-term changes as the water chemistry changes around them.