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Carolina Bays?

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Please also see:  Bob Kobres' page

A description of characteristics

Carolina Bays (so named for the profusion of Bay trees they support) are first distinctive because of their uniform nature. Unlike virtually any other bodies of water or changes in elevation (Kaczorowski), these topographical features follow a reliable and unmistakable pattern. Carolina Bays are circular, typically stretched, elliptical depressions in the ground, oriented along their long axis from the Northwest to the Southeast. As seen below, they are further characterized by an elevated rim of fine sand surrounding the perimeter which defines a unique interior ecosystem.

Conference poster concerning Carolina bay formation from the May 23-25, 2007

American Geophysical Union (AGU), Joint Assembly, Acapulco, Mexico

Though uniform in the broad sense, the Bays are dramatically different in the particulars of their measurements and hydrology. The length of Bays ranges from Lake Waccamaw, N.C., at 7 miles, to depressions only 200 feet long, with a median length of approximately 1/4 mile. The depth of Bays ranges from 0 to 23 feet below the elevation of the surrounding terrain. (Kaczorowski). Eyton and Parkhurst detail additional characteristics of Carolina Bays below:

1. The Carolina Bays are ellipses and tend to become more elliptical with increasing size. Many bays, however, lack true bilateral symmetry along either the major or minor axis. The southeast portion of many bays is more pointed than the northwest end and the northeast side bulges slightly more than the southwest side. Known major axis dimensions vary from approximately 200 feet to 7 miles.

2. The Carolina Bays display a marked alignment with northwest-southeast being the preferred orientation. Although there are minor local fluctuations, deviations from the preferred orientation appear to be systematic by latitude (Prouty, 1952).

3. The bays are shallow depressions below the general topographic surface with a maximum depth of about 50 feet. Large bays tend to be deeper than small bays, but the deepest portion of any bay is offset to the southeast from the bay center.

4. Many bays have elevated sandy rims with maximum development to the southeast. Both single and multiple rims occur, and the inner ridge of a multiple rim is less well developed than the outer rim. Rim heights vary from 0 to 23 feet.

5. Carolina Bays frequently overlap other bays without destroying the morphology of either depression. One or more small bays can be completely contained in a larger bay.

6. Some bays contain lakes, some are boggy, others are either naturally or artificially drained and are farmed, and still others are naturally dry.

7. The stratigraphy beneath the bays is not distorted (Preston and Brown, 1964; Thom, 1970).

8. Bays occur only in unconsolidated sediments. Bays in South Carolina are found on relict marine barrier beaches associated with Pleistocene sea level fluctuations, in dune fields, on stream terraces and sandy portions of backbarrier flats (Thom, 1970). No bays occur on modern river flood plains and beaches. Bays exist on marine terraces as much as 150 feet above sea level in South Carolina but also occur on discontinuous veneers of fluvial gravels on the Piedmont in Virginia (Goodwin and Johnson, 1970).

9. Carolina Bays appear to be equally preserved on terraces of different ages and formational processes.

10. Bays occur in linear arrays, in complex clusters of as many as fourteen bays, as scattered individuals, and in parallel groups aligned along the minor axes 11. Bays are either filled or partly filled with both organic and inorganic materials. The basal unit in some bays is a silt believed to represent loess deposited in water.

12. No new bays appear to be forming although Thom (1970) and Frey (1954) cite evidence for recent enlargement of existing Carolina Bays. Price (1968) states that most bays appear to be getting smaller by infilling.

13. Bays are underlain by carbonate, clastic and crystalline bedrock overlain by variable thicknesses of unconsolidated sediments in which the bays are found.

14. Ghosts of semi-obliterated Carolina Bays appear to represent former bays which were filled after formation by terrestrial sediments and organic materials.

15. Small bays deviate further from the mean orientation per region than large bays do.

16. No variation in the heavy mineral suite was found along a traverse of the major axis of one South Carolina bay, even though samples were taken from the bay floor, bay rim and the adjacent non-bay terrace (Preston and Brown, 1964).

The range and number of Carolina Bays are a significant (if crudely catalogued) factor in their description. Bays are identified along the entire range of the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard, from New Jersey to Florida, and increase in frequency to a highest concentration along the border of North and South Carolina.   

The precise geomorphologic process responsible for creating these extraordinary features has long been debated, and more than a dozen theories of origin are commonly cited in the Carolina Bay literature:

* marine theories include sand bar dams across drowned valleys (Glenn, 1895);

*swales in underwater sand dunes (Glenn, 1895);

*submarine scour by eddies, currents and undertow (Melton, 1934);

*progressive lagoon segmentation (Cooke, 1934);

*gyroscopic eddies (Cooke, 1940; 1954);

*fish nests created by the simultaneous waving of fish fins in unison over submarine artesian springs (Grant, 1945).

*subaerial hypotheses include artesian spring sapping (Toumey, 1848);

*peat burning by paleo-Indians (Wells and Boyce, 1953);

*eolian deflation and/or deposition (Raisz, 1934; Price, 1951, 1958, 1968;

*and Carson and Hussey, 1962);

*solution (Johnson, 1936; Lobeck, 1939; Le Grand, 1953; and Shockley and others, 1956);

*periglacial thaw lakes (Wolfe, 1953);

*wind deflation combined with perched water tables and lake shore erosion at a 90o angle to the prevailing wind (Thom, 1970);

*artesian spring sapping and eolian deposition (Johnson, 1936);

*and progressive lagoon segmentation modified by eolian processes stabilized by climatic changes (Price, 1951, 1958, 1968)

In general, however, the debate is properly divided into two camps: those who propose a number of terrestrial mechanisms operating together to form the Bays, and others who conclude that a single encounter with a space borne object best accounts for their unusual characteristics. The fifty odd year exchange between these two groups reveals a fundamental division of geological science and, indeed, other earth and human historical sciences. The question at hand is an old one: Are all earth's features and geological phenomena best explained by slow mechanisms, identifiable today and operating over long periods of time -- or is it reasonable to include dramatic, if seemingly rare, catastrophic events as punctuating factors in earth's evolution? The search for the origin of the Carolina Bays is heavily, and negatively, influenced by this wider dispute.

The Debate Begins

The scientific dispute concerning the origin of Carolina Bays debate began ironically with the arrival of seemingly unrelated science, aerial photography.

In the 1930's, county by county aerial photographs were mandated by the Roosevelt Administration as part of the government's effort to provide stability and assistance to farmers in the Depression. (Savage p.21)  When first examined, these photographs revealed to astonished Southern farmers and scientists alike an incredible array of elliptical, repeating patterns in the previously familiar landscape. It is easy to imagine the wonder expressed by the locals at the sight of the magnitude and symmetry of the Carolina Bays viewed from aerial photographs. These were structures that for generations had been regarded only as a peculiar nuisance. Many observers were quick to conclude that the depressions were obviously remnant scars from a collision of a number of bodies with Earth (Savage p. 21).

Figure 4. The image above kicked off the Carolina Bay debate in 1933. 

An article from popular Harpers Weekly was typical of press reports that fired the nation's imagination:

"The comet plunged down with a hiss that shook the mountains, with a crackle that opened the sky. Beneath the down plunging piston of star, compressed air gathered. Its might equaled and then exceeded that of the great star itself. It burst the comet nucleus. It pushed outward a scorching wind that must have shoved the waters upon the European shores, and on land leveled three hundred foot pines, spreading them radially outward like matches in a box.  The comet struck, sending debris skyward, curtaining the east, darkening the west. Writhing clouds of steam swirled with writhing clouds of earth. For ten minutes there was a continuous bombardment, and the earth heaved and shook. For 500 miles around the focal spot of 190,000 square miles, the furnace snuffed out every form of life."

"The Comet That Hit The Carolinas" Edna Muldrow, Harpers Monthy, 1933

This conclusion is fantastic even today.  In the 1930's it was more striking.   At the time, scientists were only beginning to come to grips with earth craters and impact evidence. Many geologists of the day were still taught that Meteor Crater in the Arizona desert was the only extant evidence, world-wide, of a large collision ever having taken place. Today, more than 300 craters are cataloged with additional features being regularly discovered.

 

The Search

Frank A. Melton and William Schriever of the University of Oklahoma were the first to mount an effort to locate conclusive evidence of multiple impacts in the Carolinas.   Like William Prouty (the former Chair UNC Department of Geology and life long supporter and contributor to the "extraterrestrial" theory) their research was inconclusive. .

Field surveys were notable for their failure to locate any meteoritic material, or other features traditionally associated with meteor strikes (Ray Kaczorowski, 1977, Carolina Bays: A Comparison with Modern Oriented Lakes, p 25-35). The researchers, however, should not be faulted for their lack of determination. Hundreds of Bays were examined in difficult field conditions (Savage) and included detailed magnetometer surveys suggesting buried material in certain locations, but failing to locate samples or produce consistent results .

Obviously, the early extraterrestrial researchers had a problem on their hands. Though the Bays strongly suggested a causal link to energy directed from above, the science of the day demanded that at least some hard evidence of "rocks from space" be produced in order for their hypothesis to be accepted as conclusive. This evidence was never produced.

Though early reports of the Bays had caused excitement among the public, which readily accepted the strike hypothesis, other scientists joined to oppose the idea that Bays were anything more than atypical kaarst features, subject to and resulting from commonly recognized aeolian and solution processes (essentially unusual lakes formed by a combination of wind, water and waves.)

 

 

Chief among the critics of the collision theory was Douglas A. Johnson, who proposed his own hypothesis which Savage terms the "artesian-solution-lacustrine-aeolian" process. (Savage p. 53)  Johnson envisioned a vast series of artesian springs from which water flowed after traveling under great pressure underground from the mountains to the coastal plain. These springs, according to Johnson, would have eroded the marl and unconsolidated sediments through which they flowed. The resulting pool of surface water would, as a result, appear steadily more elongated to the ground observer in response to the migrating source. Johnson then theorized a steady and consistent wind from the Northwest which would further "scallop out" the water body, creating the oriented, elliptical depressions we see today.

[Douglas Johnson's 1942 book declaring Carolina bays are an entirely terrestrial phenomena is here: "The Origin of the Carolina Bays". Viewing it requires requires the highly recommended DjVu browser viewer])

Johnson's theory, or variations of it, is still accepted today by most of the scientific community. It was particularly bolstered by what appears to be the last serious investigation of Bay origin, led in 1977 by Ray Kaczorowski. In his NASA funded report, "The Carolina Bays: A Comparison with Modern Oriented Lakes," Kaczorowski sought to debunk the impactual theory by providing the missing piece of the puzzle: Where in the world are analogous features which exhibit similar characteristics and exist under currently operating geomorphologic influences?

Kaczorowski found his similar features in three far flung corners of the Western Hemisphere: East Texas, Chile and the North Slope of Alaska. In each of these regions the researcher and his graduate assistants personally examined wind oriented lakes he postulated were Bays "in the making." Indeed, after returning home to Columbia, he rented a wind machine and proceeded to blow pools of water in a sandbox into faintly "Bay-like" shapes.

This study seems to have concluded the long and difficult dispute over the origin of Carolina Bays. Kaczorowski provided the proponents of terrestrial causation with similar features of supposedly similar formation, while the other camp was justifiably exhausted and weakened after years of derision for their failure to have located hard evidence, or even precisely describe the nature of the event which the Bays had intuitively suggested.

 

       

Carolina Bays northwest of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

 

Contrary Evidence

Others, however, were never as convinced as the general scientific and academic community that the wind theories of Johnson and Kaczorowski had adequately described the geomorphology of Carolina Bays. Henry Savage, in a carefully argued treatise befitting his occupation as a trial lawyer, banker, mayor and naturalist, found very little new in Kaczorowski's "evidence" of similar processes forming Bays around the world. His chief objection to Kaczorowski's conclusions called into question the researchers claim that other areas are truly analogous to Carolina Bays. In his book, The Mysterious Carolina Bays, he skillfully challenges the reliability of Kaczorowski:

"That Kaczorowski, the current leader of the wind theorists, found it necessary to journey all but literally to the ends of the earth to view features on harsh landscapes in fierce climes that only faintly resemble Carolina Bays speaks for the uniqueness of the Carolina Bay phenomena, particularly when the striking images brought back from those places are contrasted with Carolina Bays. Even more pertinent questions confronting the wind origin theorists are nearer at hand. How, for example can they account for regional winds being so much more emphatic in their earth sculpturing activities in the border region of the Carolinas than elsewhere in the region? How can they with credibility attribute to winds, notoriously symbolic of instability and vagaries, the creation of beautifully sculptured, almost perfectly elliptical overlapping Bays without semblance of distortion of either? If they are familiar with the tenacity of the root bound earth of Southern ponds, how can they reasonable espouse a wind genesis of the Bays in the face of the knowledge imparted to us by those pollen studies of the paleobotanists."

[Henry Savage's 1982 book, "The Mysterious Carolina Bays", claiming bays are best explained by a sudden event, is fundamental to any Carolina bay researcher.  It requires a simple DjVu plug-in in order to be viewed.]

 

 

Savage's points are good ones. It is difficult to understand how the study of Bay origin should suddenly cease, as it did, simply because someone had catalogued faintly similar features, formed in a context which is provably different. Various studies indicate that the environment at the time of Bay formation, broadly 10,000 to 20,000 years BP, hardly resembled the treeless windswept plains of the locales visited by Kaczorowski. (The Age and Trophic History of Lake Waccamaw, North Carolina, J. C. STAGER and L. B. CAHOON Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Kobres PC.) Kaczorowski also failed to address numerous additional features unique to Carolina Bays, such as Bays within Bays, and Bays intersecting other Bays.

Fortunately, the search for the origin of Carolina Bays was not completely abandoned following Kaczorowski's flawed study and Savage's careful critique.

Robert Kobres, an independent researcher in Athens, Georgia, has studied Carolina Bays for nearly 20 years in conjunction with his larger interest in impact threats from space. His recent, self-published, investigations have profound consequences for Carolina Bay study and demand research by academia as serious, relevant and previously unexamined new information. The essence of Kobres' theory is that the search for "debris," and the comparison of Bays with "traditional" impact craters, falsely and naively assumes that circular craters with extraterrestrial material in them are the only terrestrial evidence of past encounters with objects entering earth's atmosphere.

The last twenty years have seen an explosion of evidence that earth has often encountered objects that profoundly alter our environment (Lewis, Rain of Iron and Ice ). For instance, it is now commonly accepted that an impact with a large object in the Gulf of Mexico caused the extinction of large dinosaurs -- a theory considered bizarre and irresponsible at the time Kaczorowski studied the Bays.

 

Kobres goes a logical step further by assuming that forces associated with incoming bodies, principally intense heat, should also leave visible signatures on the earth. And, finally, that physics does not demand that a "collision" of the bodies need necessarily occur to produce enormous change on earth.

To verify that such encounters are possible outside of the physics lab, we need look no further than the so-called "Tunguska event." On June 30, 1908, in the vicinity of the Tunguska River deep in Siberia, a tremendous explosion instantly leveled 2000 sq. km. of tundra, felling trees by the millions, all left pointing outward from a central area. News accounts of the day told of Londoners being able to read newspapers from the glow of the night sky for days afterward, and seismographs worldwide recording an apparent cataclysm in Siberia. Unfortunately (or fortunately as the case may be) the explosion had occurred in an area so remote, and during a time of such political turmoil, that no researcher pinpointed or even managed to travel to the suspected impact site for more than two decades.

Not until pioneer Russian meteoritic researcher Leonard Kulik managed to gain entry to the inhospitable area in 1927, did anyone but local tribesmen view the devastation and its peculiar nature.

(At the epicenter of the explosion lay not a large crater with a "rock" in it, as might be expected, but nothing more than a number of "neat oval bogs." The Tunguska literature generally mentions the bogs only in passing, since Kulik failed in digs there to locate any evidence of a meteorite and went on to examine other aspects of the explosion. Perhaps ironically, Melton and Schriver, around the same time and on the opposite side of the world, were fruitlessly searching their own "neat, oval bogs" for evidence of a meteor, neither apparently having the knowledge of Kulik's efforts, or vice versa.)

It is generally accepted today that the Tunguska event can only be attributed to a rare encounter with a "comet," or incoming body of such a nature that it left no stony or ferrous material, but simply vaporized and scorched the earth below in a rare display of high energy physics.

 

To explain the Bays, Kobres proposes a similar encounter, albeit of larger proportions and more accurately described as a "near miss." The "Kobres Event" proposes that a "comet," if you like, whipped past the Earth, exchanging enormous energy but not impacting directly to form a typical crater. It is demonstrable that such an encounter would show an intense flash of heat onto the ground below. This heat would have caused moister portions in the Pleistocene landscape to explode into steam, leaving the depressions in the ground that we know today as "Carolina Bays."

 

Kulik's "neat, oval bogs" in Siberian Russia, are then, to Kobres, logical analogies to the Carolina Bays: the result of intense heat causing the summer melt ponds of the area to explode and leave signature elliptical depressions.

Movie 5 (4.2 MB) Map view of blast zone from 3-D simulation of a 15 megaton explosion. Axes are labeled in centimeters, and colors indicate wind speed. Expanding oblong shape is the blast wave moving along the surface, blowing down trees with wind speeds decreasing from high hurricane force of 60 m/s (magenta) to below 20 m/s (yellow). Blast-furnace conditions are sustained downrange (left) of the origin where the fireball contacted the surface. This did not happen at Tunguska, so the asteroid must have been smaller (less energetic).http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/asteroid.html

Smoking Guns

Kobres' conclusion would be just another addition to the long list of formation theories had he not uncovered a previously unexamined analogy to the Carolina Bays. Completely absent from the controversy prior to his study is any comparison of so-called "maar" features with "Carolina Bays "

Found all over the world in volcanic areas, maar features are relatively well understood. Geologists consider them the result of a sudden encounter between moist ground and up-welling volcanic heat. In their particulars, Maar features resemble Carolina Bays more neatly than any lakes proposed by Kaczorowski.

"Maars" come in groups, some seeming to orient themselves in relation to others, with many (presumably more recent) Maars exhibiting the "rims" previously unique to Bays.

(The Cerro Colorado volcano, a maar feature in the Pinacate Volcanic Field of northern Mexico, presents this author with the clearest "cousin" to a typical Carolina Bay.)

Assuming the lack of any geologically recent volcanic activity on the North American Atlantic Coastal Plain, Kobres believes Maar features to have an analogous, not identical, nature to Carolina Bays. In this formulation, the "Bays" and the "Maars" are both signatures of powerful steam explosions, with the heat having come from different sources.

Put another way, Kobres believes Bays should be considered "top-induced" maars, formed by heat from above, as opposed to "true" Maars, which have volcanic and subterranean origins.

Beaver and Bays

Another line of Kobres' investigation is enlightening, particularly to those puzzled by the seeming "arrangement" of Bays within inter-stream divides.

Large beavers, he supposes, created pools of water that efficiently collected radiant energy from the sky and suddenly exploded into super-heated steam.

The arrangement of Bays in many instances resembles the documented relation of beaver ponds to one another. If such an arrangement of large shallow ponds were visited by a sudden and scorching heat from above, one might conclude that the resulting explosions would leave relatively arranged "craters."

As incredible as this may seem, at first, no portion of this theory is impossible or even improbable. Like mammoth, large saber toothed cats, giant ground sloth and other now extinct Pleistocene mammals, giant beaver were residents of the Bay area in relatively recent times. Skeletons and remains of these enormous beasts are found all over the world, many dating to around the time of Bay formation, which generally coincides with the sudden global climatic transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene age around 12,000 years ago.

Scientists have long puzzled over the apparent climate shift at this time (Younger Drayas). A relatively mild world of large mammals and abundant resources turned suddenly to a harsh clime as cold as the coldest times of the last Ice Age. The suddenness is most strikingly suggested by the frozen mammoth unearthed in Russia through the years. Some with flowering vegetative remains still in their stomachs.

It is not difficult to conclude in fact that Kobres' may have defined evidence of the event marking the dawn of the modern climatic age -- and the subsequent rise of agricultural man, who had to work harder than his Pleistocene ancestors to ensure a living.

Other Evidence

Additional support for such a hypothesis is available from other reliable sources.   I have culled from extensive readings of North Carolina's natural history, what could well be eyewitness accounts of the event itself.

Allow me to pass along the following accounts of legends passed down among Native Americans concerning the origin of the Bay lakes on whose shores they long lived:

Of Lake Mattamuskeet:

".....kneeling at a sacrificial alter, she prayed to the Great Spirit to save the brave and her perishing people. After her invocation, a star fell to the earth, and rain soon followed. Days and days of rain quenched the fire. Great holes burned in the earth by the fire were filled, forming a great inland sea." (Algonquin Indian legend, Touring the Backroads of North Carolina's Upper Coast, p.268)

Of Lake Waccamaw:

"The local Indians are known as the "People of the Falling Star," and they believed the lake was created by a falling star, perhaps a great meteorite." (Waccamaw-Siouan Indian legend, Wild Shores, Exploring the Wilderness Areas of Eastern North Carolina. p.150)

It is perfectly reasonable to conclude that if such a cataclysm occurred during a known time of known human habitation on the North American Atlantic Coastal Plain (approximately 10,000 -15,000 BP) legends would be told to relate the horror to future generations.

Kobres and a growing number of other researchers have assembled a variety of accounts from around the globe describing tremendous cataclysms directed from above.

From Chinese silks, to petroglyphs and the Holy Bible, hundreds of legends and holy scripts are easily interpreted as descriptive of comets and their sometimes awful consequences for the environment and humanity. The Carolina Bay event may well have only been one of many significant "impacts," though surely, due to its magnitude, it was the most significant in human memory.

Life in the Bays

In recent years, the geomorphologic debate detailed above has taken a back-seat to studies of the biology and natural wonders of Carolina Bays. (Thomas Ross, Comprehensive Carolina Bay bibliography).

In this sphere of study, the Bays are most notable for their "hydrological" characteristics and the diverse biota it supports. Carolina Bays are literally filled with life. Among the water dependent animal species commonly found in natural Bays are:

Great Blue Herons

Ornate Chorus Frog

Pond Cypress

Spring Pepper

Gopher Frog

Water Beetle

Eastern newt

Tiger Salamander

Mabee's salamander

Clam Shrimp

Red copepods

Dragonfly Nymph

(North Carolina Wild Places, 1997, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission)

Carolina Bays also harbor numerous species adapted both to up and low-land; including white tailed deer, brown bear, bobcats and rattlesnakes. Plant life in the Bays is equally diverse, supporting a number of rare and endangered species, such as Long Leaf Loosestrife and Venus Flytrap .

It is hardly surprising then that the diversity is not limited to the visible world. Researchers at the University of Georgia announced in April, 1997, the discovery of previously unknown bacteria that grow and live in the Bay muck:

"The team determined the DNA sequences of some 35 clones from the Carolina bay samples, which were taken in the mud beneath a shallow layer of water. Of these 35, some 32 were affiliated with five bacterial groups, Proteobacteria (11); Acidobacterium-like bacteria (8); Verrucomicrobium-like bacteria (7); gram-positive bacteria (3) and green nonsulfur bacteria (3).

One sequence did not seem to be associated with any major division. The most interesting fact, however, is that none of the clones exhibited an exact match to any of the 16S rDNA sequences deposited in numerous databases. "This suggests that most of the bacteria in Rainbow Bay are novel species," said Lawrence Shimkets, one of the Georgia researchers .

Previously Unknown Bacteria Discovered By University Of Georgia Researchers In Features Called Carolina Bays, University of Georgia Press Release, April 9, 1997

(Anomalous genetic variations have also been identified by recent investigators of the natural characteristics of the Tunguska area.)

Some even go as far as to link theories of extraterrestrial causation with the unique biological features:

"Mac, incidentally, believes that the plant got its name because the seed actually came from Venus. Southeastern North Carolina is dotted with mysterious shallow round craters, most (some ed.) of them water filled called Carolina Bays. Some scientists believe the craters were caused by a meteor. shower long ago, and Mac believes that. "My great, great granddaddy remembers when they fell," he says. He also believes the seeds of the flytrap, a plant with a spacemonsterish look about, arrived on those meteors by way of Venus." When asked if there were flys on Venus for the traps to catch, Mac says, "I guess so. No telling what's there. Nobody ever been there to find out, have they?"

(North Carolina Curiosities, 1990, Jerry Bledsoe, Glope Pequote Press, Second Edition)

Range and concentration of the carnivorous Venus Flytrap

http://science.howstuffworks.com/venus-flytrap1.htm

Venus flytraps are found in only one location -- worldwide -- within 75 miles of Wilmington, North Carolina.  This small region coincides neatly with the central axis of Carolina Bay occurrence .

The Good News

Fortunately, most undisturbed Carolina Bays are protected by one of the nation's strongest environmental statutes, Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. This Act, and subsequent regulatory interpretations, regulates the disposal into, and alteration of, jurisdictional "Waters of the United States."

For the purposes of the law, "Waters," has been interpreted to mean areas which are saturated in the uppermost foot of soil for a portion or all of the growing season (as little as 10 days in North Carolina). Virtually all Carolina Bays meet this criterion, and thus, in their natural vegetated state, are subject to a complex state and federal permitting system.

Federal wetland protection has been an unexpected boon for the conservation, and, particularly, restoration, of Carolina Bays. Because of their vast number and range, Carolina Bays are often unavoidably the subject of agricultural or infrastructure development, particularly highways. This has led to very recent efforts to restore Bays as "wetland mitigation banks." Wetland banks are a new and novel method of dealing with the conflicting societal needs to both develop and protect or restore certain lands.

Wetland banks sell wetland "credits" to off-set and compensate for unavoidable development in wetlands like Carolina Bays. For example, for each acre destroyed by the Department of Transportation in building or widening a road, a credit can be purchased to "mitigate" the loss as required to receive a permit.

North Carolina's first privately permitted mitigation bank is a 2200 acre ditched and drained Carolina Bay, the first phase of which will require the restoration of 690 acres from farm back to forest. Over 200,000 trees of 27 different varieties were planted at this site, and over 20 linear miles of ditches now draining the property were backfilled. The restoration, when complete, will produce approximately 220 federally authorized mitigation credits. Carolina Bays are well suited as wetland banks, they are natural "bathtubs" and the water in them can be more reliably controlled without flooding surrounding lands.

This process clearly improves the environment by requiring that 2 or mores acres are restored for every acre lost. It also allows the development of certain Bays when it has been proven to be absolutely necessary and there are no other reasonable options. This new development for Carolina Bays also offers an opportunity to collect a great deal more scientific data on their natural processes.

Dover Bay Wetland Restoration Site, Lenoir County, North Carolina

Conclusion

I have always maintained a strong interest in the unexplained parts of science and history.  Most of the subjects I have encountered, however, do not promise an easy solution.  In anthropology, there will always be another missing link, or in archaeology, another hole to dig.  But in the small corner of research where Carolina Bays reside there seems plenty of reason to believe a definitive solution could be found at little expense. 

Biological assays and efforts to conserve Carolina Bays are numerous (and increasing) but no work is underway to re-evaluate  their genesis using modern methods and technologies.  Geophysical researchers simply abandoned this line of study in the late 1970's, just before science was armed with some of its best tools.  Contrast the last effort to model wind formation theories -- Ray Kaczorowski and his 1979 sand-box -- with the computational and graphical modeling programs available to today's university researchers.  Or the crude 1950's ink drawings describing the range and orientation of Carolina Bays -- with today's advanced GIS and space based earth sensing equipment.  

I firmly believe a properly equipped and modestly funded, multidisciplinary, modern day graduate lab could, if not solve the the problem outright, clearly dismiss one or the other camps of thought. 

Given a confident belief that the answers are indeed out there in the sand, we come then to the true shame of the Carolina Bay story:  the willingness of the current geophysical research community to tolerate and admit such a profound "mystery" in their midst. I've known respected professional earth scientists to brush off questions about Carolina Bay origin with references to "alien landings" and "giant fish."  With prodding, they generally elicit a thin collage of wind and wave theory faintly recalled from their student years.  One gets the distinct feeling that the study of Carolina Bay origin is the "crazy aunt in the attic" of the Coastal Plain researcher.  And that visiting his dear relative is hardly worth the disturbing consequences. 

Perhaps then it is not a lack of equipment, money, or even interest that relegates this subject to a mystery.  The stakes may simply be too high for open-minded research in this field at this time.  If it were revealed that these omnipresent features were indeed created suddenly around the time of the most recent extinction and climatic change, the "textbooks" would again need rewriting, and serious preparation and contemplation made for our future protection.  It is disturbing to think that today's scientists, more than two hundreds years after the discovery of Carolina Bays, seem more reluctant than ever to step back and contemplate the whole of their mystery. 

"Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations."

--Thomas Huxley, 1860

Please see also:  Bob Kobres' page

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