COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND— Most people see a sandbar as a place to tan; Anna Pfeiffer-Herbert sees a battlefield. At 2:30 pm on a quiet Thursday afternoon, the Stockton University associate professor stood before a room of students to reveal the invisible war of currents and chemistry inside bar-built estuarine landscapes — ecosystems where freshwater is trapped by shifting sand walls. These unsteady conditions impact New Jersey’s coasts.
These bar-built estuarine landscapes in New Jersey have been suffering, with either having water flow or water getting stuck for a month or longer at a time, without the inlets being flushed out. Toms River, NJ, is one of the New Jersey towns that has the greatest suffering, with the inlets flushing in, struggling to flush out.
The barrier island system is a dynamic chain of mineral-rich sandy islands that stretches along the coast. This can be very helpful as a buffer against storms, but for New Jersey, it separates the island from the Atlantic Ocean.
