Here's a good National Geographic read. Free if you give them an email address.
Rising Seas: Will the Outer Banks Survive?
Under the combined effects of storms, development, and sea-level rise, portions of this narrow, 200-mile island chain are collapsing, says
Stanley Riggs, a coastal geologist at East Carolina University in Greenville.
"We're losing them right now," he says. "In the next ten years, it's going to be awful."
Riggs has been studying the state's coastline since 1967, when he got a job at East Carolina University to start a coastal and marine science program in an unused building on Roanoke Island. In 2010, he was a member of a science panel that produced a controversial
report warning that North Carolina could face 39 inches (1 meter) of sea-level rise by 2100, as glaciers melt and ocean waters warm and expand.
"Sea-level rise and storms are taking out eastern North Carolina today—not a hundred years from now. They're doing it today," he says.