PART II: STUDY AREA 

 Geographical Setting 



7. The study area encompasses 210 km of Atlantic Ocean barrier island 

 coast. It begins in the north 12 km west of Cape Henry, Virginia, and extends 

 south to 8 km west of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina (Figure 1). A bay and 

 four sounds back the barrier islands along the southern 175 km of ocean shore. 

 These include Back Bay, Currituck Sound, Albermarle Sound, Roanoke Sound, and 

 Pamlico Sound. Presently, only Oregon Inlet connects a sound and the ocean 



in the study area. Rudee Inlet provides ocean access from a small lake near 

 Virginia Beach. 



8. Currituck Banks now extends south from Back Bay, Virginia, to 

 Oregon Inlet, North Carolina. A past segment of the Banks from the vicinity 

 of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to Oregon Inlet is still called Bodie Island. 

 Beyond Oregon Inlet, the barrier is known as Pea Island about as far south as 

 Rodanthe, North Carolina, and as Hatteras Island from Rodanthe to Hatteras 

 Inlet, North Carolina; the boundary between the two lies at the site of now- 

 closed New Inlet. Hatteras Island is sharply angled to the southwest at Cape 

 Hatteras. The Cape is one of the most conspicuous cuspate headlands along the 

 Atlantic Coast (Figure 2). 



9. The barrier islands vary in width from 0.5 to almost 5 km. A 

 frontal dune backs most of the barrier beach (Figure 3). Dunes west of the 

 frontal dune, most notably Jockey's Ridge, North Carolina (Figure 4), also are 

 found along some sections. Hennigar (1979) found these dunes to be moving to 

 the southwest at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina (Figure 5), and elsewhere. 

 In most locations, aeolian, overwash, and relict flood-tidal delta flats ex- 

 tend from the dunes to the sound (Figure 6) . Relic beach ridges exist in the 

 flats area at Kitty Hawk, west of Cape Hatteras, and at Cape Henry (Figure 7). 



10. Sand size varies in an alongshore direction, across the beach and 

 from season to season. From the Virginia-North Carolina line to Cape Hatteras, 

 the median foreshore sand size is 0.44 mm, with a slight average increase from 

 north to south (Shideler 1973). Within this area, the beach from between 

 Corolla and Duck to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, is composed of anomalously 

 large, iron-stained quartz and feldspar sand in the 1-mm-diameter range. 

 Beach sand north of the States boundary is finer. Average dune sand size in 



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