HR: 0800h
AN: H51C-0385    [Abstracts]
TI: Dune Retreat and Shoreline Change on the Outer Banks of North Carolina
AU: * Burroughs, S M
EM: sburroughs@ut.edu
AF: The University of Tampa, Dept. of Chemistry and Physics, Tampa, FL 33606 United States
AU: Tebbens, S F
EM: sarah.tebbens@wright.edu
AF: Wright State University, Dept. of Physics, Dayton, OH 45435 United States
AB: Barrier islands are popular recreational areas of economic importance that are constantly changing. Costly efforts are made to maintain beaches and stabilize dunes within this dynamic environment. We examine one year of coastal change along the barrier islands of the North Carolina Outer Banks. LIDAR data collected in September of 1997 and 1998 along a 175 km stretch of the Atlantic coast of the North Carolina Outer Banks provide the basis for quantitative determination of changes in beach morphology. The survey of 1998 was conducted a few days after the passage of Hurricane Bonnie. Hurricane Bonnie provided a unique opportunity to study factors that influence coastal change because after making landfall it traveled roughly parallel to the coastline, causing relatively uniform storm conditions along a long reach of coast. During the one-year study interval, beach widths throughout the study region tended to decrease. We determined the maximum dune retreat for each 1 m bin of 1997 beach width in different parts of the Outer Banks. Maximum dune retreat was greatest for beach widths of approximately 20 m and for dune base elevations less than 4.0 m. For comparable beach widths, maximum dune retreat increased from south to north. The undeveloped natural beaches of the Core Banks experienced relatively little change in beach width, dune height and dune base position. The greatest morphological changes occurred on Ocracoke Island and Hatteras Island where the dunes had been stabilized and the beaches had been artificially maintained.
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects (4802, 4902)
DE: 1824 Geomorphology: general (1625)
DE: 1834 Human impacts
DE: 4217 Coastal processes
DE: 4546 Nearshore processes
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005