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| USGS Coastal Carolina Project 2003 - Bodie Island |
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) geologic discipline (GD) scientists from Woods Hole, MA, and their collaborators are mapping the regional sedimentary framework of the inner shelf of northern North Carolina to understand recent coastal processes, including erosion and the impacts of shoreline change.
Eight borings were drilled in the Kitty Hawk area of the Outer Banks during the initial phase of the project conducted in 2002. During the second phase of subsurface investigations, six test holes were drilled in the region from Nags Head to Cape Hatteras Island from April 6 to April 17, 2003. The rotosonicdrilling team recovered almost 900 ft of continuous sediment cores from six sites, including one mainland site, and measured the salinity of 130 pore-water samples. North Carolina Geological Survey (NCGS) personnel, Bill Hoffman and Bob Brooks, collected and transported the core samples to the NCGS core archive facility in Raleigh, NC where they have been split and sampled for stratigraphic, paleontological, and geochemical analysis. Beth Wrege and other USGS scientists from Water Resources Discipline (WRD) offices in Raleigh, NC and other offices in Reston, VA performed gamma logging of each hole and installed monitoring wells at three sites.
Other participants in the 2003 drilling program included Reide Corbett, Lance Tully, and Irene Abbene (East Carolina University); and an excellent drilling crew from Boart Longyear. Additional chemical analyses are being performed on pore-water samples at East Carolina University.
This work is being done in cooperation with the National Park Service. The ground-water monitoring information from these sites will supplement existing knowledge of salt-water intrusion and fresh-water occurrence in the Outer Banks barrier island system. USGS-WRD personnel will be monitoring water levels and salinity in two of the three wells.