Abstract
Estuarine bathymetry is an interpolated data set representing the most up-to-date depth sounding information available at the time of publication. Data can be used either as a background layer or as a 3-D surface for draping thematic maps such as benthic habitats, marine organism habitats, or geologic data. This information supplies the integral component of models that are necessary to understand or predict movement of oil and hazardous materials, distributions of temperature and salinity, migration of animals, and modeling of storm surge and tsunami effects. Seventy of the approximately 130 estuaries within the conterminous U.S. are available, representing some of the nation's most important estuaries. (The estuaries that are not included were those that had less than 80 percent coverage of the digital sounding data needed to support detailed bathymetric processing.)