The Outer Banks are a 200-mile barrier island chain on the North Carolina coast and are a major tourist destination, with tourists flocking there to enjoy fresh seafood and beautiful beaches.
However, major portions of the island-chain, which starts in southern Virginia and stretches nearly the entire North Carolina coastline, are collapsing.
Stanley Riggs, a coastal geologist at East Carolina University in Greenville, told National Geographic that the damage is the result of tropical storms, beach-front development and sea-level rise.
The magazine reported that in certain areas, the beaches have receded about 2,500 feet in just 150 years – and geologists such as Riggs warn that the beautiful beaches there could one day be swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean.
He said: ‘Sea-level rise and storms are taking out eastern North Carolina today - not a hundred years from now. They're doing it today.’
Bill Herderich
In geological history 150 years is nothing. Why does everyone think everything happens in our life time, after all they just discovered pre human foot prints in volcanic ash that dated by 3.7 million years.
Hey, mother nature changes constantly, she has done so for all of the past and will continue to do so all of the future.
PeelSkid
Some would disagree.
- source: Dinosaur Adventure Land
(I drove through there at Thanksgiving. It's near relatives' homes. The locals, a pretty conservative lot, consider them cultish kooks.)
--- The Arrogant Jerk: Crabby and irritable since 1998.
Worth reading the source article in Nat Geo: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/special-features/2014/07/140725-outer-banks-north-carolina-sea-level-rise-climate/
Thanks for posting these articles. They're a good reminder of why we rent a house in Nags Head for our OBX trips, and don't risk being stranded by Route 12 being washed out to the south.
Barrett