3. This report provides a long-term basic data set for use in manage- 

 ment and engineering decisions related to the coastal zone. In the absence of 

 other data, past shoreline changes usually provide the best available basis 

 for predicting future changes. An extrapolation of past changes is not with- 

 out risk, though. Man's actions may have affected the natural coastal change 

 processes and thereby altered the rates of change. Probably more importantly, 

 the material processes themselves may have altered over time thereby varying 

 the shoreline change rate; Hayden (1975), for example, has identified rela- 

 tively large changes in storm-wave climate in this century at Cape Hatteras. 



4. Historic shoreline change data are direct, believable, and explicit 

 and can be updated as new data become available. Shoreline changes obtained 

 from historic charts for a specific time period also are invariant. Past 

 shoreline changes based on NOS surveys can be supported in a court of law. 



5. Coastal engineers use past shoreline changes in the design of proj- 

 ects for shoreline stabilization, flood prevention as a result of storm surges, 

 and maintenance of navigable depths in coastal waterways. A knowledge of past 

 changes in shoreline position is a useful and often necessary basis from which 

 to predict the effects of natural processes and proposed modifications on the 

 coastal zone. 



6. This is an empirical report. It serves to explain and enhance the 

 shoreline change maps which go with it. Since it is sometimes difficult to 

 determine trends from maps alone, average changes have been calculated for 

 each minute of latitude (north-south-trending shoreline) and longitude (east- 

 west-trending shoreline). Relationships are established between the shoreline 

 change rates and (a) shore orientation, (b) location of capes, (c) proximity 

 to present inlets and inlets that were historically open, (d) shore-connected 

 ridges, and (e) an alongshore sediment transport nodal reach. A brief de- 

 scription of wind, wave, tide, and sedimentological parameters in the study 

 area is provided in Part II for readers interested in those factors; however, 

 because their records are insufficiently detailed or too short with respect to 

 shoreline changes, these parameters are not used further in this report. 



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