Barrier Island


Book Description

Tucker Loomis is a hard and dangerous man with a ruthlessness all West Bay fears and respects, and an improbable amount of money. Wade Rowley is a common man who aspires to honour but gets caught up in the footwork of a skilled swindler. In a pitiless game, with a few harsh rules and just one way of keeping score, the wrong man will die. And another will get away with more than murder. 'Lively, gritty ... complex and convincing' New York Times Book Review




North Carolina's Barrier Islands


Book Description

In this stunning book, nature photographer and ecologist David Blevins offers an inspiring visual journey to North Carolina's barrier islands as you have never seen them before. These islands are unique and ever-changing places with epic origins, surprising plants and animals, and an uncertain future. From snow geese midflight to breathtaking vistas along otherworldly dunes, Blevins has captured the incredible natural diversity of North Carolina's coast in singular detail. His photographs and words reveal the natural character of these islands, the forces that shape them, and the sense of wonder they inspire. Featuring over 150 full-color images from Currituck Banks, the Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores, and the islands of the southern coast, North Carolina's Barrier Islands is not only a collection of beautiful images of landscapes, plants, and animals but also an appeal for their conservation.







The North Carolina Shore and Its Barrier Islands


Book Description

The North Carolina Shore and Its Barrier Islands is the latest volume in the series, Living with the Shore. Replacing an earlier volume, this thoroughly new book provides a diverse guide to one of America's most popular shorelines. As is true for all books in the series, it is based on the premise that understanding the changing nature of beaches and barrier islands is essential if we are to preserve them for future generations. Evidence that the North Carolina shore is changing is never hard to find, but recently the devastation wrought by Hurricane Fran and the perilous situation of the historic lighthouse at Cape Hatteras have reminded all concerned of the fragility of this coast. Arguing for a policy of intelligent development, one in which residential and commercial structures meet rather than confront the changing nature of the shore, the authors have included practical information on hazards of many kinds--storms, tides, floods, erosion, island migration, and earthquakes. Diagrams and photographs clearly illustrate coastal processes and aid in understanding the impact of hurricanes and northeasters, wave and current dynamics, as well as pollution and other environmental destruction due to overdevelopment. A chapter on estuaries provides related information on the shores of back barrier areas that are growing in popularity for recreational residences. Risk maps focus on the natural hazards of each island and together with construction guidelines provide a basis for informed island management. Lastly, the dynamics of coastal politics and management are reviewed through an analysis of the controversies over the decision to move the Cape Hatteras lighthouse and a proposed effort to stabilize Oregon Inlet. From the natural and historic perspective of the opening chapters to the regional discussions of individual barrier islands, this book is both a primer on coastal processes for the first time visitor as well as a guide to hazard identification for property owners.




The Battle for North Carolina's Coast


Book Description

The North Carolina barrier islands, a 325-mile-long string of narrow sand islands that forms the coast of North Carolina, are one of the most beloved areas to live and visit in the United States. However, extensive barrier island segments and their associated wetlands are in jeopardy. In The Battle for North Carolina's Coast, four experts on coastal dynamics examine issues that threaten this national treasure. According to the authors, the North Carolina barrier islands are not permanent. Rather, they are highly mobile piles of sand that are impacted by sea-level rise and major storms and hurricanes. Our present development and management policies for these changing islands are in direct conflict with their natural dynamics. Revealing the urgency of the environmental and economic problems facing coastal North Carolina, this essential book offers a hopeful vision for the coast's future if we are willing to adapt to the barriers' ongoing and natural processes. This will require a radical change in our thinking about development and new approaches to the way we visit and use the coast. Ultimately, we cannot afford to lose these unique and valuable islands of opportunity. This book is an urgent call to protect our coastal resources and preserve our coastal economy.




Islands at the Edge of Time


Book Description

Islands at the Edge of Time is the story of one man's captivating journey along America's barrier islands from Boca Chica, Texas, to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Weaving in and out along the coastlines of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina, poet and naturalist Gunnar Hansen perceives barrier islands not as sand but as expressions in time of the processes that make them. Along the way he treats the reader to absorbing accounts of those who call these islands home -- their lives often lived in isolation and at the extreme edges of existence -- and examines how the culture and history of these people are shaped by the physical character of their surroundings.




Seashore Chronicles


Book Description

ASSATEAGUE, Chincoteague, Parramore, Smith's, Hog, Wallop's: The names of Virginia's isolated barrier islands evoke their beauty and wildness, their dynamic ecology. Drawing chapters from the writings of novelists, naturalists, journalists, and outdoorsmen, Seashore Chronicles presents the history of these slender, constantly shifting landforms from the 1650s to the present. Robert E. Lee surveys the agricultural potential of Smith's Island, and a young Howard Pyle describes the Chincoteague pony penning. William Warner provides an impressionistic foreword and noted writer Tom Horton adds a contemporary chapter on the islands' survival. Eastern Shore residents Brooks Miles Barnes and Barry R. Truitt have compiled a cyclical story of economic settlement, of destruction and conservation, for those who have visited the islands many times as well as for those who have not yet experienced their alluring vitality.




The Nature of North Carolina's Southern Coast


Book Description

With The Nature of North Carolina's Southern Coast, Dirk Frankenberg's effort to provide a comprehensive field guide to the state's dynamic shoreline is complete. Picking up where his 1995 book The Nature of the Outer Banks left off, this bo




Cat Island


Book Description

Just off the coast of the Gulf Islands National Seashore lies Cat Island, an isolated, T-shaped sliver of sand with a remarkable past. A coveted hiding place for Jean Lafitte's pirate treasure in the late eighteenth century and illegal booze during Prohibition, Cat Island also witnessed the first shots of the Battle of New Orleans, an encampment for Seminoles during the Trail of Tears and the first lighthouses on the Mississippi coast. As a child, author John Cuevas learned that his family had owned and lived on the island for three generations beginning with his ancestor, Juan de Cuevas, referred to as "The King of Cat Island," who received it by way of a Spanish land grant. In this engaging work, Cuevas chronicles the historic events that occurred on the island's shores and offers a tribute to the legacy of one of the Gulf Coast's pioneer families.




Life Traces of the Georgia Coast


Book Description

Have you ever wondered what left behind those prints and tracks on the seashore, or what made those marks or dug those holes in the dunes? Life Traces of the Georgia Coast is an up-close look at these traces of life and the animals and plants that made them. It tells about how the tracemakers lived and how they interacted with their environments. This is a book about ichnology (the study of such traces) and a wonderful way to learn about the behavior of organisms, living and long extinct. Life Traces presents an overview of the traces left by modern animals and plants in this biologically rich region; shows how life traces relate to the environments, natural history, and behaviors of their tracemakers; and applies that knowledge toward a better understanding of the fossilized traces that ancient life left in the geologic record. Augmented by illustrations of traces made by both ancient and modern organisms, the book shows how ancient trace fossils directly relate to modern traces and tracemakers, among them, insects, grasses, crabs, shorebirds, alligators, and sea turtles. The result is an aesthetically appealing and scientifically grounded book that will serve as source both for scientists and for anyone interested in the natural history of the Georgia coast.