Left: Bird's eye of Sheepshead Meadows Above: Great Blue Heron, Top Right: Marsh Veg. (photos: JCNERR)

Salt marshes serve as important feeding, nesting and refuge for a host of fish and wildlife species.  In addition to outright loss through dredging and infilling, salt marshes in Barnegat Bay have undergone extensive modification by various mosquito control measures. Parallel ditching to drain surface water (mosquito breeding habitat) was first conducted in New Jersey in 1906.  Historic maps circa 1888 were compared with land cover maps from 1972, 1984 and 1995 to monitor the loss of salt marsh area.
 

Most of Barnegat Bay's wetland loss appears to have occurred between 1940 and 1970.  Subsequent to the passage of the Coastal Wetlands Law of 1970, 167 hectares, or 1.5%, has been lost to development.   There are 950 kilometers (590 miles) of parallel grid mosquito control ditches affecting approximately two-thrids of Barnegat Bay's marshes.

 

The Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis (CRSSA), used several data sets to map Barnegat Bay's salt marshes.  A sample of the Cook and Vermuele historical maps, circa 1888, is shown above.  These maps were digitally scanned and integrated into CRSSA's geographic informations systems (GIS) data base.