We examined the effect of salt marsh vegetation on the benthic environment in macro-tidal flats at Donggeomdo, Ganghwa, on the west coast of Korea. Nine stations were established along a transect across the tidal flats, including salt marsh, and field sampling was conducted monthly from July 1997 to June 1998. During the study period, environmental parameters fluctuated as follows: salinity, 15.0 to 28.2 psu, exposure time, 613 to 702 hr/m, inundation time, 28 to 117 hr/m, sediment organic carbon, 0.71 to 1.34%, nitrogen, 0.07 to 0.16%, sulfur from 0.07 to 0.22%, mean grain size from 6.3 to $6.9{phi}$, water content from 19.4 to 44.4%, water temperature from 4.4 to $20.4^{circ}C$ and temperature of the surface sediments, 2.7 to $31.1^{circ}C$, in total, seven halophyte species were sampled and found to be vertically distributed across the tidal levels. Carer scabrifolia, Suaeda maritima, Limonium tetragonum and Phragmites communis dominated the upper zone of the salt marsh, Juncus haenkei, Triglochin maritimum and P. communis dominated the middle zone, and Suaeda japonica predominated in the lower area. Principal component analysis (PCA) and non-metric multi-dimensional scaling revealed that the zonation of halophytes was related to environmental variables such as salinity and exposure time. The halophyte communities were likely related to the organic content of the surface sediment.