page_title: Carolina bays
section_title: Orientation
hierarchical_section_title: Carolina bays / Geomorphology / Orientation
caption_attribution_description: English: North Carolina Department of Transportation un-copyrighted LIDAR elevation data projected through purchased software
context_page_description: Carolina bays are elliptical depressions concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard within coastal Delaware, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and north Florida. In Maryland, they are called Maryland basins. Within the Delmarva Peninsula, they and other coastal ponds are also called Delmarva bays.
  They are named for the bay trees frequently found in them, not because of the frequent ponding of water.
context_section_description: According to published papers and monographs, the orientation of the long axes of Carolina bays systematically rotate northward along the Atlantic Coastal Plain from northern Georgia to northern Virginia; the average trend of the long axes of Carolina Bays varies from N16°W in east-central Georgia to N22°W in southern South Carolina, N39°W in northern South Carolina, N49°W in North Carolina, and N64°W in Virginia. Within this part of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the orientation of the long axes of Carolina bays varies by 10 to 15 degrees. If the long axes of these Carolina bays, as measured by Johnson (1942), are projected westward, then they converge, neither in the Great Lakes nor Canada, but in the area of southeastern Indiana and southwestern Ohio.
  At the northern end of the distribution of Carolina bays within the Delmarva Peninsula and New Jersey, the average orientation of the long axes abruptly shifts by about 112 degrees to N48°E. Further north, the orientation of the long axes becomes, at best, distinctly bimodal, and exhibits two greatly divergent directions and, at worst, completely random and lacking any preferred direction. Plate 3 of Rasmussen and Slaughter, which is reproduced as Figure 51 of Kacrovowski, illustrates the disorganized nature of the orientations of the long axes of Carolina bays within the northernmost part of their distribution within Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester counties, Maryland.
  At the southern end of their distribution, the Carolina bays in southern Georgia and northern Florida are approximately circular in shape. In this area, they have a weak northerly orientation.
caption: LIDAR elevation image of 300 square miles (800 km2) of Carolina bays in Robeson County, N.C.
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