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North Carolina Coastal Geology

Submitted by bthoole on Thu, 09/13/2018 - 18:08

To understand the impact of hurricane Florence on North Carolina's coast it is important to undertand the formation events of the northern and southern coasts. At the northen coastal plain, one must travel 100km (60miles) before exceeding three meters of elevation. This is drastically different from the southern coastal plain, where only 1-2 miles needss to be traversed to exceed a three meter elevation. All this relates to the slight differences that were at play when they were formed. 200 million years ago when several continents formed a supercontinet, what is now Africa began to pull away. This left some rock to create the North Carolina crystalling rock platform in the southern part of the state. Soft sediment filled around it and the basin has been filling with sediment ever since the Atlantic Ocean was formed. Subsidence of the land and sea level rise means the north coast is sinking faster than the south.

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