BARNEGAT BAY ECOSYSTEMS AND WATERSHED
The Barnegat Bay Watershed encompasses inland forests and streams, the salt marshes and open waters of the estuary, and the barrier islands that create the estuary – and a lot of people with their towns, homes, businesses, cars and roads. The combination of forest, streams, estuary, shore and intensively developed communities makes this watershed an unequaled setting to learn about natural systems, conservation, and the impacts people have on wildlife, habitats and water resources.
The Barnegat Bay Watershed encompasses almost all of Ocean County’s boundaries and covers about 600 square miles. The interior of the watershed is characteristic Pine Barrens forest with a mosaic of developed areas that are concentrated close to the estuary shore and in the northern third of the watershed. The southern two-thirds of the watershed are in the Pinelands National Reserve, where a special regional conservation and development plan ensures that most of the interior forests are not developed.
The combination of forest, streams, estuary, shore and intensively developed communities makes this watershed a unequaled setting to learn about natural systems and conservation.
Ocean County has been one of the fastest growing counties in America over the past fifty years. Yet due to the Pinelands laws and strong public support for purchasing open space land, there are still 170,000 acres of forest, 100,000 acres of wetlands, and an astonishing 140,000 acres of land available to the public in preserved in State, county, municipal and nonprofits parks and forests.
Pine Barrens forests are created by the sandy, acidic, low-nutrient soils and streams typical of New Jersey’s outer coastal plain. These conditions of soil and water make the communities of plants and animals in the Pine Barrens different from the temperate forests of the wider mid-Atlantic region. Only those species adapted to live in acidic, low-nutrient conditions can thrive in the Pine Barrens.
Barnegat Bay itself is one of New Jersey’s natural treasures. It is a beautiful playground for residents and visitors. We swim, fish, bird-watch and boat on the Bay. And all of the joy we take in the Bay absolutely depends on its natural ecology, on the good health of the ecosystem. It is a complex and fascinating ecosystem.
Barnegat Bay, Manahawkin Bay and Little Egg Harbor form a single, connected estuary nearly 44 miles long. We will call the whole of it Barnegat Bay. Barrier islands create the Bay, trapping the ever-changing mixture of fresh water flowing into the Bay from the west and the sea water flowing in through gaps in the barrier islands from the east.
As an estuary, a place where fresh and salt water mix, Barnegat Bay is a biologically productive ecosystem that includes a great variety of habitats. The meeting of fresh and salt water within a partially enclosed space creates variations in salinity, depth, sediments types, temperature, tidal forces, even local weather, across the estuary. This variety of habitats creates a diverse, but closely connected, set of plant and animal communities, providing opportunities for many different species to thrive within the ecosystem.
