Hurricane Maria’s impacts on deep-water coral reefs off Puerto Rico
USGS research geologist Curt Storlazzi was quoted in an August 22 Nature news article about Hurricane Maria’s effects on deep-water coral reefs off Puerto Rico.
USGS research geologist Curt Storlazzi was quoted in an August 22 Nature news article about Hurricane Maria’s effects on deep-water coral reefs off Puerto Rico. Storlazzi’s collaborators from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez placed USGS instrument packages on the steep seaward slope of a reef off the island’s southwest coast in July 2017 to study reef structure and health. The sensors continued to collect data when Hurricane Maria, a category 4 storm, swept from east to west across the island in September 2017. The corals appeared healthy a few months after the storm when the sensors were recovered. Preliminary analysis by Storlazzi and others indicates that the hurricane sent waves crashing into the reef with unusual frequency and pushed a swell of cold water from the ocean bottom up to the reef.
Related Content
Coral Reef Project: Puerto Rico
Related Content
- Science
Coral Reef Project: Puerto Rico
To better understand how waves move across coral reefs and cause flooding on tropical shorelines, USGS scientists have installed video cameras and oceanographic instruments off San Juan and Rincón, Puerto Rico. Their work is part of a study funded by USGS after Hurricanes Irma and María. The offshore instruments measure wave heights and speeds; the onshore video cameras show where waves break on... - Data
- Publications
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.