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HYDROGRAPHY OF NORTH CAROLINA 

 MARINE WATERS 



Gross Geography of the Sounds and Neighboring Waters 



The sandy offshore beach which is more or less continuous from Sandy Hook, 

 New Jersey, to Miami, Florida, is well developed in North Carolina, where 

 it is interrupted by a few relatively narrow inlets. Along the northeastern 

 half of the State this bank, as it is called locally, lies as a prominence far to 

 the east of the mainland and the broad river mouths. This results in broad, 

 shallow sounds (Figure i and Table i) quite different from the narrow 



TABLE 1 



The Approximate Area and Volume of the Larger North Carolina Sounds 



* Estimates made with the aid of a planimeter. The elongate broad mouths of tributaries, 

 such as the Alligator, Pamlico, Neuse, North, and Newport rivers were not included. 

 t Approximate area X estimated average depth. 



lagoons usually formed behind such beaches. Johnson (19 19, reprinted 1938) 

 refers to this North Carolina coast as a compound shoreline, the offshore bar 

 suggesting emergence and the drowned-valley appearance of the river mouths 

 indicating later submergence. 



Four major river systems flow into the sounds, and a fifth, the Cape Fear 

 River, flows into the ocean to the southeast. The total drainage area, 30,290 

 square miles (see Figure 18 for the extent of the individual drainage basins), 

 is largely confined to the low, flat Coastal Plain, but the Roanoke-Dan basin 

 to the north also drains the more roUing Piedmont Plateau and the eastern 

 slope of the Appalachian Mountain Region. In general the drainage is in 

 forest land that has been stripped extensively for agriculture. 



