Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Documentary about sea-level rise threatening the Republic of the Marshall Islands features USGS findings

USGS research in the Republic of the Marshall Islands forms part of the scientific foundation of an interactive documentary released April 6 by PBS Frontline.

The Last Generation” profiles three children whose homeland in the Marshall Islands could become uninhabitable during their lifetimes. The producers incorporated information from interviews with research geologist Curt Storlazzi, who leads the USGS project “The Impact of Sea-Level Rise and Climate Change on Pacific Ocean Atolls that House Department of Defense Installations.” Studies by Storlazzi and his colleagues show that the combined effects of climate change—particularly sea-level rise, storm-wave overwash, and reduced rainfall—could make living and working on atoll islands in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and elsewhere nearly impossible as early as 2035.

People are on two sunken hulls of ships in shallow water.
Screenshot from PBS Frontline's interactive documentary.

Get Our News

These items are in the RSS feed format (Really Simple Syndication) based on categories such as topics, locations, and more. You can install and RSS reader browser extension, software, or use a third-party service to receive immediate news updates depending on the feed that you have added. If you click the feed links below, they may look strange because they are simply XML code. An RSS reader can easily read this code and push out a notification to you when something new is posted to our site.