Excerpt from Final Report: Aquatic Resources Advisory Team, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, North Carolina, 2-3 March, 1986The legislation establishing Cape Hatteras National Seashore allows for the existence of towns and villages to remain on its northern boundary (bodic Island) of private land, and at its southern terminus on Ocracoke Island. Although there were several villages and summer home communities on the Outer Banks before the National Seashore was established, residential development has greatly accelerated in recent years. Numerous new homes have not only been built in villages such as Rodanthe, Avon, and Buxton, but greatly expanded development has occurred in the Kitty Hawk and Nags Head areas to the north of the park. Dare County, in fact, is the fastest growing county in North Carolina. Shortage of fresh water is already a concern for some of these communities, and increased withdrawal of water may initiate hydrologic changes for the entire Outer Banks. Further, the ecology of fresh water communities within the park may be in¿uenced by such diverse factors as rise in sea level, storm overwash, changes in natural fire regime, artificial drainage and diking, anthropogenic drawdown of the water table, and air and water pollution. Both fresh water and estuarine communities may be vulnerable to water pollution, and many of the estuaries may be influenced by dredging and construction activities. A proper understanding of the hydrologic dynamics of the park is not only necessary to maintaining ecologically rich interior wetlands which are also a very important scenic resource, but may actually be important to understanding the dynamics of terrestrial plant communities, such as the forest stands at Buxton Woods. The purpose of this advisory team was to assist Cape Hatteras National Seashore in.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.