| North Carolina's coasts are in crisis. Read the recent reports... | |
| Stan Riggs and colleagues at ECU have put together a a series of brochures explaining and illustrating coastal problems facing NC. Click on the following links for the reports: 1) Coasts in Crisis, 2) Past and Future Inlets, and 3) Estuarine Shoreline Erosion. |
At left is an aerial photograph of Hatteras Island looking west after Hurricane Isabel in 2003. Overwash and a new inlet are visible. Photograph from USGS. |
| What is NC COHAZ? |
 North Carolina has an extensive coastal zone where people live, work and recreate. This coastal zone is home to important human infrastructure and natural resources. Coastal hazards pose a threat to these resources and the society
that uses them. The primary goal of the
North Carolina COastal HAZards (NC COHAZ) Decision Portal is to distribute coastal hazards information to the general public and managers. This effort is being coordinated by
J.P. Walsh and Reide Corbett (Geological Sciences and ICSP)
and
Tom Allen and Tom Crawford (Geography) at East Carolina University. The work is part of a larger
UNC Competitiveness grant
coordinated by Steve Culver and Stan Riggs and involving a team of researchers from several UNC schools. The State of North Carolina is funding the grant. This site is designed to be not only a site for a variety of coastal hazards information and data but also a source of tools to allow people to better understand the hazards. Please visit the Hazard Maps page to use some of the tools to visualize hazards in your area of interest. Use the "Quick Links" above for information on immediate conditions and hazards. |
| What is the image at the top of the page? |
 The
image at the top of the page (or header image) is a fusion of three
images with some annotation. Image 1 (see figure at right) is
an aerial photograph looking approximately northeast across the
Outer Banks near Nags Head. The feature that looks like a
river, in fact, is an overwash channel, which formed along
Soundside Road during the
Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962.
The photograph is from
a book by the same name written by David
Stick. The crosshairs indicate the location of the
photograph on image 2, a
DOQQ aerial photograph taken in
1998. Note, the location of Jockey's Ridge sand dune
immediately to the north. The third image is the same DOQQ
overlain by digital-elevation-model data from the
NC Floodplain Mapping Program.
The data highlight the barrier island has little relief. A
linear dune along the ocean front is evident. It is locally
reduced in elevation; these are potentially areas of future overwash
during major storm events (e.g., hurricanes). |
