page_title: Carolina bays
section_title: Theories of origin
hierarchical_section_title: Carolina bays / Theories of origin
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a photo of a dozen or more Carolina bays. This is just north-west of Red Springs, North Carolina, at latitude 34.820885, longitude -79.213057.
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: Most geologists today interpret the Carolina bays as relict geomorphological features that developed via various eolian and lacustrine processes.  Furthermore, multiple lines of evidence, e.g. radiocarbon dating, optically stimulated luminescence dating, and palynology, indicate that the Carolina bays predate the start of the Holocene. The range of dates can be interpreted that they were either created episodically over the last tens of thousands of years or were created at time over a hundred thousand years ago and have since been episodically modified.
caption: More than a dozen bays are shown in this photo in southeastern North Carolina. Several are cleared and drained for farming.
exif: {}