The Barnegat Bay/Little Egg Harbor (BB/LEH) estuary is suffering from eutrophication issues due to nutrient loading, most importantly nitrogen, from both atmospheric as well as urban and agricultural land use in the watershed. As part of their ongoing monitoring efforts, the Rutgers University Grant F. Walton Center for Remote Sensing & Spatial Analysis, with funding provided by the Barnegat Bay National Estuary Program, undertook to map and assess recent land use change in the Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor watershed.
Overview
The Barnegat Bay/Little Egg Harbor (BB/LEH) estuary is suffering from eutrophication issues due to nutrient loading, most importantly nitrogen, from both atmospheric as well as urban and agricultural land use in the watershed. As part of their ongoing monitoring efforts, the Rutgers University Grant F. Walton Center for Remote Sensing & Spatial Analysis, with funding provided by the Barnegat Bay National Estuary Program, undertook to map and assess recent land use change in the Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor watershed. The updated mapping reveals that urban land use increased from approximately 25% in 1995 to approximately 30% of the BB/LEH watershed in 2006. Including all altered land uses (i.e., agriculture and barren lands) puts the percentage of altered land in the BB-LEH watershed at over 33% in 2006. The BB/LEH estuary system is continuing to experience a significant conversion of forested and wetland habitats to urban land cover and thereby exacerbating nutrient loading to the BB-LEH estuary.
The riparian zone is defined as those areas that are adjacent or hydrologically connected to the surface water network (e.g., streams, rivers, lakes or reservoirs). Riparian zones may constitute the immediate upland buffer to a stream as well as areas that may be more physically distant but are hydrologically connected through groundwater flow (e.g., hydric soils or wetlands that are in close proximity to a stream). Protected riparian buffer zones adjacent to water bodies and streams, where human development and agriculture is excluded or minimized is advocated as a “best management practice” to reduce the impact of human developed land uses on adjacent aquatic ecosystems and downstream water quality. As outlined in Action Item 6.1 of the Barnegat Bay Estuary Program Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (Barnegat Bay Estuary Program, 2000), “a re-examination of the current condition of riparian buffers and strategic measures to ensure their protection are vital to meeting the goals of water quality and habitat protection within the Barnegat Bay watershed.” The objective of this study was to address this action item.
This assessment shows that development of riparian buffer zones continues with a total 1,920 acres of riparian habitat converted to urban areas between 1995 and 2006. The sub-basins draining to the northern portion of BB/LEH estuary (i.e., the Metedeconk, Beaver Dam, Kettle Creek and Silver Bay sub-basins) have riparian zones that are significantly compromised with > 20% riparian zones in altered land use. We have identified approximately 1,300 acres of barren land and 677 acres of agricultural land within the mapped riparian zones that could serve as potential targets for revegetation and restoration. Over 600 acres or approximately one third of the area identified above as of potentially restorable land is located in the highest priority sub-basins that have the highest percentage of altered riparian zones. Additional work as well as local partners are needed to translate the results of this assessment to refine and prioritize a site-level portfolio of possible restoration targets.
Contact
Rick Lathrop
Director, Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis (CRSSA)
lathrop@crssa.rutgers.edu
Grant F. Walton Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis (CRSSA)
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
14 College Farm Road, Cook Campus
New Brunswick, NJ USA 08901-8551
Tel: 732/932-1582
Fax: 732/932-2587
Web: crssa.rutgers.edu
Web site composed by the Grant F. Walton Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis (CRSSA), Rutgers University, © 2007.