Fig. 1: Shoreline changes, organic carbon (OC) erosion rates, and beach and shoreface stratigraphy along the Virginia Barrier Islands.
From: Shoreface erosion counters blue carbon accumulation in transgressive barrier-island systems
a The ten migrational and/or erosional/rotational Virginia Barrier Islands (Mid-Atlantic, USA). Island color and parenthetical values indicate OC erosion rates, normalized by shoreline length. Length and width of white arrows correspond to long-term (1870–2017 C.E.) island-averaged shoreline change rates. b Ground view of backbarrier marsh and lagoon sediment exposed along the eroding beachface and backed by a landward-migrating sandy beach and dune system. c Typical stratigraphic section from sediment cores penetrating through beachface-exposed marsh (as in b) along a landward-migrating island, identifying stratigraphic units with associated average thicknesses (with standard errors) and OC densities (with uncertainties that account for propagations of sediment bulk density standard errors and 95% confidence intervals of organic matter to OC conversions; see Supplementary Information). Barrier system diagram modified from Tracey Saxby, Integration and Application Network (ian.umces.edu/media-library).
