Every time you gaze out over the ocean, you're likely to see a slightly different scene. The barrier beach and island is a constantly changing, dynamic environment.

Fire Island National Seashore consists of 26 miles (42 km) of Fire Island itself (See Park Map), and includes portions of the adjacent estuary and ocean within its boundaries. The Seashore's William Floyd Estate, on mainland Long Island at Mastic Beach, protects additional habitat as it stretches from the tidal marshes along the Narrow and Moriches bays to the woodlands and grounds around the old Manor House, almost 1½ miles inland and at elevations as high as 15 feet above mean sea level.

Seventeen preexisting communities lie within the boundaries of Fire Island National Seashore. The effects of human impacts on the Long Island coast over the past century or more have altered the barrier beach and dunes and the natural sediment transport processes.

The National Park Service is responsible for critical coastal habitat for many rare and endangered species, as well as migratory corridors for birds, sea turtles and marine mammals. Within its boundaries, the Seashore also protects vital coastal wetlands, essential to water quality, fisheries, and the biological diversity of coastal, nearshore and terrestrial environments.

These resources are valuable economically and environmentally. Fisheries, recreation, navigation, clean water, protection from storm damages—these are a few of the values placed on Fire Island National Seashore's natural features and ecosystems. 

The sand on Fire Island moves mainly in a westerly direction toward Fire Island Inlet.

However, the chain of barrier islands and sand spits that includes Fire Island is a sand-starved system, dominated by highly dynamic processes and struggling to maintain its integrity in the face of sea-level rise and storms.

Waves, tides, currents, overwash, barrier breaching and relative sea level change are all natural processes that are critical to the formation and evolution of barrier islands, sand dunes, sand flats, lagoons and vegetated wetlands.

Learn More

To help you better understand the natural resources of Fire Island National Seashore, you may want to learn more about coastal geology:

• Introduction to Coastal Geology 
  (Views of the National Parks: Coastal Geology Knowledge Center)
• • Geology and Geography of New York Bight Beaches
  • Geology of Fire Island
  • Coastal Geology Lesson Plan

• Coastal Geology in our National Parks:
  Global Climate Change and Sea-Level Rise

Ecological Studies of the Sunken Forest, Fire Island National Seashore, New York; 1976 NPS Scientific Monograph No. 7 

• Geology and Climate of Fire Island
• Vegetational Patterns of the Atlantic Barrier Islands

A series of Science Synthesis Papers was published in 2005 to support the preparation of a General Management Plan for Fire Island National Seashore.

• The Coastal Geomorphology of Fire Island: a Portrait of Continuity and Change
  (Fire Island National Seashore Science Synthesis Paper)
  by Norbert P. Psuty, Michele Grace, and Jeffrey P. Pace, Rutgers University
  
• Bay Shoreline Physical Processes, Fire Island
  (Fire Island National Seashore Science Synthesis Paper)
  by Karl F. Nordstrom, Rutgers University
  Nancy L. Jackson, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Additional Natural Resources Reports and Technical Reports are also produced by the National Park Service.

• Recommendations for a Barrier Island Breach Management Plan for Fire Island National Seashore, including the Otis Pike High Dune Wilderness Area, Long Island, New York
  Technical Report NPS/NER/NRTR—2007/075
  by S. J. Williams and M. K. Foley
  National Park Service

Other recent research and publications that address the natural features and ecosystems of Fire Island include:

• Seafloor Sediment Distribution Off Southern Long Island, New York
  U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 00-243
  2000

The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers has been conducting comprehensive research to identify, evaluate and recommend long-term solutions for hurricane and storm damage reduction for homes and businesses within the floodplain extending along 83-miles of ocean and bay shorelines from Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point. This study area includes the shoreline of Fire Island National Seashore.

• Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point Reformulation Study
  http://www.nan.usace.army.mil/fimp/
• Vision Statement
• Reports
  

NOAA Ocean & Coastal Resource Management:

• Shoreline Management