Oregon Inlet, North Carolina—A History of Coastal Change

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. The continued investigation of sandy inlets along barrier islands is of fundamental importance to geomorphologists, geol­ ogists, and coastal engineers. The sedimentary deposits associated with the migration and closure of coastal inlets represent a significant seg­ ment of the geologic history of barrier islands, and the unstable nature of these features has been a challenge to engineers for decades. For this study, a typical unstable inlet along the Outer Banks of North Carolina has been isolated. The purpose is to describe the temporal responses of the inlet to forces on a high energy coast, and to couple these responses to the major inlet-shaping processes in order to demonstrate how their interaction results in specific inlet configurations.