query: located_in_the_administrative_territorial_entity ace basin national wildlife refuge
supports: The Edisto River is one of the longest free-flowing blackwater rivers in North America, flowing over 250 meandering miles from its sources in Saluda and Edgefield counties, to its Atlantic Ocean mouth at Edisto Beach, South Carolina. It rises in two main tributaries (North Fork & South Fork) from springs under the Sandhills region of West Central South Carolina, just to the south of the Piedmont fall line. It is the longest and largest river system completely contained by the borders of South Carolina. Its name comes from the Edisto subtribe of the Cusabo Indians. South Carolina is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. The state is bordered to the north by North Carolina, to the south and west by Georgia across the Savannah River, and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. Hunting is the practice of killing or trapping animals, or pursuing or tracking them with the intent of doing so. Hunting wildlife or feral animals is most commonly done by humans for food, recreation, to remove predators that are dangerous to humans or domestic animals, or for trade. Lawful hunting is distinguished from poaching, which is the illegal killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species. The species that are hunted are referred to as game or prey and are usually mammals and birds. The Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge is a 11,815 - acre ( 47.81 km2 ) portion of the larger ACE Basin area , and the only portions that are federally protected . The wildlife refuge is divided into two units : the Edisto River unit and the Combahee River unit . The following threatened or endangered species are present in the refuge : wood stork , American alligator and bald eagle . Saint Helena Sound is a coastal inlet in the Lowcountry region South Carolina, located along the Atlantic Ocean between Beaufort and Colleton counties. Located within the relatively undeveloped ACE Basin, the sound consists of the mouths of the Ashepoo, Combahee, and the south branch of the Edisto rivers, of which the ACE moniker derives from. The inlet is located east of Beaufort, between Edisto Island and Hunting Island. At its widest point, Saint Helena Sound is across. The Intracoastal Waterway crosses the sound. Much of lands surrounding St. Helena Sound has been preserved through the St. Helena Sound Heritage Preserve and the larger ACE Basin project. Colleton County is a county located in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. state of South Carolina. As of the 2010 census, its population was 38,892. Its county seat is Walterboro. The county is named after Sir John Colleton, 1st Baronet, one of the eight Lords Proprietor of the Province of Carolina. After two previous incarnations, the current Colleton County was created in 1800. A blackwater river is a type of river with a deep, slow-moving channel flowing through forested swamps or wetlands. As vegetation decays, tannins leach into the water, making a transparent, acidic water that is darkly stained, resembling tea or black coffee. Most major blackwater rivers are in the Amazon Basin and the Southern United States. The term is used in fluvial studies, geology, geography, ecology, and biology. Not all dark rivers are blackwater in that technical sense. Some rivers in temperate regions, which drain or flow through areas of dark black loam, are simply black due to the color of the soil; these rivers are "black mud rivers". There are also black mud estuaries. A fall line (or fall zone) is the geomorphologic break that demarcates the border between an upland region of relatively hard crystalline basement rock and a coastal plain of softer sedimentary rock. A fall line is typically prominent when crossed by a river, for there will often be rapids or waterfalls. Many times a fall line will recede upstream as the river cuts out the uphill dense material, often forming c-shaped waterfalls. Because of these features riverboats typically cannot travel any farther inland without portaging, unless locks are built there. On the other hand, the rapid change in elevation of the water, and the resulting energy release, makes the fall line a good location for water mills, grist mills, and sawmills. Because of the need for a river port leading to the ocean, and a ready supply of water power, settlements often develop where rivers cross a fall line. In biology, a species (abbreviated sp., with the plural form species abbreviated spp.) is the basic unit of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which two individuals can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. While this definition is often adequate, looked at more closely it is often problematic. For example, in a species complex, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear or disappear altogether. Other ways of defining species include similarity of DNA, morphology, or ecological niche. The presence of locally adaptive traits may further subdivide species into infraspecific taxa such as subspecies. A drainage basin or catchment basin is an extent or an area of land where all surface water from rain, melting snow, or ice converges to a single point at a lower elevation, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another body of water, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean. Thus if a tributary stream joins a brook that in turn joins a small river which is a tributary of a larger river, there is a series of successively larger (and lower elevation) drainage basins. For instance, the Missouri and Ohio rivers are within their own drainage basins and also within the drainage basin of the Mississippi River. A wildlife refuge, also called a wildlife sanctuary, is a naturally occurring sanctuary, such as an island, that provides protection for species from hunting, predation or competition; it is a protected area, a geographic territory within which wildlife is protected. North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. The Cusabo or Corsaboy were a group of historic Native American tribes who lived along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in what is now South Carolina, approximately between present-day Charleston and south to the Savannah River, at the time of European encounter. English colonists often referred to them as one of the Settlement Indians of South Carolina, tribes who settled among the colonists.  An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands is called an archipelago, e.g. the Philippines. Ashepoo River is a short blackwater river in South Carolina. It rises in a confluence of swamps south of Walterboro, flows in southeast direction and then empties into Saint Helena Sound at . The entire course of the river lies within the boundaries of Colleton County. The Ashepoo basin forms part of the ACE Basin, a coastal conservation area that encompasses its bottomlands confluence with the Combahee and Edisto river basins (thus, the origin of the refuge's name, formed from the first letters of the names of the 3 rivers: A-C-E). Many people enjoy fishing and boating on this river and others in South Carolina. In an ecosystem, predation is a biological interaction where a predator (an organism that is hunting) feeds on its prey (the organism that is attacked). Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation often results in the death of the prey and the eventual absorption of the prey's tissue through consumption. Thus predation is often, though not always, carnivory. Other categories of consumption are herbivory (eating parts of plants), fungivory (eating parts of fungi), and detritivory (the consumption of dead organic material). All these consumption categories fall under the rubric of consumer-resource systems. It can often be difficult to separate various types of feeding behaviors. For example, some parasitic species prey on a host organism and then lay their eggs on it for their offspring to feed on it while it continues to live in or on its decaying corpse after it has died. The key characteristic of predation however is the predator's direct impact on the prey population. On the other hand, detritivores simply eat dead organic material arising from the decay of dead individuals and have no direct impact on the "donor" organism(s). The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's oceans with a total area of about . It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earth's surface and about 29 percent of its water surface area. It separates the "Old World" from the "New World". The Combahee River is a short blackwater river in the southern Lowcountry region of South Carolina formed at the confluence of the Salkehatchie and Little Salkehatchie rivers near the Islandton community of Colleton County, South Carolina. Part of its lower drainage basin combines with the Ashepoo River and the Edisto River to form the ACE Basin The Combahee empties into Saint Helena Sound near Beaufort, which in turn empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological and/or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the enabling laws of each country or the regulations of the international organisations involved. The term "protected area" also includes Marine Protected Areas, the boundaries of which will include some area of ocean, and Transboundary Protected Areas that overlap multiple countries which remove the borders inside the area for conservation and economic purposes. There are over 161,000 protected areas in the world (as of October 2010) with more added daily, representing between 10 and 15 percent of the world's land surface area. By contrast, only 1.17% of the world's oceans is included in the world's ~6,800 Marine Protected Areas.
candidates: atlantic ocean basin beaufort caribbean charleston colleton county helena missouri most north america of ohio pacific ocean piedmont plain river rock saint helena south carolina upland
answer: south carolina