North Carolina's Outer Banks are in constant motion, responding to
weather, waves, and the rising sea level. Beaches erode, sometimes
taking homes or sections of highway with them into the surf; sand
dunes migrate with the wind; and storms open new inlets and dump
sand in channels and sounds. A classic guide,
The Nature of the
Outer Banks describes these dynamic forces and guides visitors
to sites where they can see these phenomena in action.
In the first section of the book, Dirk Frankenberg highlights three
major processes on the Outer Banks: the rising sea level, movement
of sand by wind and water, and stabilization of sand by plant life.
In the second section, he provides a mile-by-mile field guide to
the northern Banks, and in the final section, he alerts readers to
the dangers of overdevelopment on the Outer Banks. In a new
foreword for this edition, Betsy Bennett documents the
ever-more-critical situation of these shifting sands.
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