Polygon boundaries for source data of a continuous terrain model for water circulation studies: Barnegat Bay, New Jersey. (Esri polygon shapefile, Geographic, WGS 84)

Water quality in the Barnegat Bay estuary along the New Jersey coast is the focus of a multidisciplinary research project begun in 2011 by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. This narrow estuary is the drainage for the Barnegat Bay watershed and flushed by just three inlets connecting it to the Atlantic Ocean, is experiencing degraded water quality, algal blooms, loss of seagrass, and increases in oxygen-depletion events. The scale of the estuary and the scope of the problems within it required a regional approach to understand and model water circulation within the bay and adjacent ocean. A continuous elevation surface (terrain model) integrating all available elevation data in the area was produced for the water circulation modeling efforts.

新泽西海岸沿线的巴内加特湾（Barnegat Bay）河口水质，是美国地质调查局（U.S. Geological Survey, USGS）于2011年联合新泽西州环境保护部启动的多学科研究项目的核心关注方向。该狭长河口为巴内加特湾流域的排水区域，仅通过三座连通大西洋的入海口实现水体交换，当前正面临水质恶化、藻华暴发、海草床退化以及缺氧事件频发等多重问题。鉴于该河口的规模及内部问题的复杂性，需采用区域化研究方法，以解析海湾及邻近海域的水循环过程并构建相应模型。为支撑水循环模型构建工作，研究团队整合该区域所有可用高程数据，生成了连续高程表面（地形模型）。