The 5 counties of Dare, Hyde, Beaufort, Tyrrell, and Washington all lie wholly or partly on the peninsula.

[2] The pocosin marshlands of the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula drain into the Alligator River, an important link in the intracoastal waterway.

[2] It previously contained over 500,000 acres of Atlantic white cedar forest; less than 5% of this remains due to farming and drainage of the area that began with European colonization in the 1700s.

[4] In 2009, the North Carolina chapter of the Nature Conservancy began a project to address the rising salinity levels in wetlands on the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula.

This included plugging agricultural canals and updating antiquated water control infrastructure.