GEOMORPHOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF CAROLINA BAYS

Carolina Bays are elliptical surficial geomorphic features, with long-axes trending in a northwest-southeast direction, found mostly in the Atlantic Coastal Plains from Florida to New Jersey. These shallow features are an integral part of the cultural and physical landscapes, as they affect the location of infrastructure and agriculture, while increasing flood potential due to high clay concentrations (Ross, 2000). Historical estimates put their number near 500,000, but new high-resolution datasets coupled with modern methods and techniques will undoubtedly increase this inventory. After being identified in 1847, Carolina Bay genesis theories were widely controversial in the literature, but generally overlooked by the geoscience community until aerial photography became widespread in the 1930’s. Age dating attempts have varied, but most methods give dates from the Pleistocene, or ~100,000 BP (Brooks et al., 2001).

 Since Carolina Bays are shaped similar to sinkholes, morphology metrics are borrowed from karst geology to elicit useful statistical and geomorphic comparisons (Basso et al., 2013). Application of morphometric techniques to these little understood features provides an objective and quantitative system of landform description and analysis that has been previously unexplored in Carolina Bay research. The powerful graphical and analytical capability of GIS rapidly facilitates this capture and exploration. This research produces a dataset of Carolina Bays to evaluate optimal procedures for their mapping and inventory, and derives geomorphic variables capable of illuminating the influence of Quarternary climate and geomorphic processes on development.