Why do sections of some estuaries appear ramped or have a constant slope?
The constant slope may be real or an artifact of sampling density. Very few estuaries have a constant sounding density over the entire area of the estuary. Some estuaries have larger gaps in data than others, and the density of the original soundings often change from one section of the estuary to another. A triangulation process is used to produce the gridded data. Areas where there are dense concentrations of soundings will produce more accurate grid values than areas where the soundings are sparse. Some areas have gaps of many hundreds of meters. These areas will show interpolation across large distances which will appear evenly spaced. In order to determine where these areas are, the user can download the Sounding Coverage Images from the individual estuary’s data page. These images allow the user to get a general idea of the distance between the original soundings data so that they may assess for themselves whether or not the original point coverages meet their project’s resolutio
