Nearshore Environmental Health

USGS monitoring data for estuary and coastal-ocean sites in the southeastern New York region and links to related projects with more information about coastal flood hazards, water quality, and other topics. The USGS operates the most extensive satellite network of tide-gaging stations in the region, many of which form the backbone of flood-warning systems. The USGS provides current ("real-time")...

Problem The presence of pathogens in Long Island marine embayments and the hazards they pose to marine resources and human health is of increasing concern. Many waterbodies on the New York State Section 303(d) List of Impaired Waters have pathogens listed as the primary pollutant that are suspected to originate from urban/storm runoff. There is neither a clear understanding of the relative magnit

The present landforms of Long Island are the result of many geologic processes, some of which began many millions of years ago and some of which began only recently. Most of the major features of the present-day topography, however, are related to the last glaciation, which ended approximately 22,000 years ago.

On Long Island, land use includes the human activities and management practices for which land is used. Land cover is a mosaic of developed, forest, agriculture, and wetlands areas. Both land use and land cover are usually discussed in similar environments. The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) serves as the definitive LANDSAT-based, 30-meter resolution, land cover database for the Nation. NLCD...

Problem The Town of Riverhead in the northeastern Suffolk County includes rural farmland and suburbs and is bounded by the Long Island Sound to the north and Peconic Bay to the southeast. Riverhead’s close proximity to saline embayments and its location along the northeastern discharge area for Long Island’s groundwater flow system makes it vulnerable to saltwater intrusion. Several public-suppl

Problem Long Island’s sole-source aquifer system, which includes the Lloyd, Magothy, Jameco, and upper glacial aquifers, supplies groundwater to over 2.8 million people. As a coastal aquifer system, it is susceptible to saltwater intrusion. Past pumpage and sewering (fig. 1) resulted in increased salinity in most aquifers in all counties (Buxton and Shernoff, 1999; Misut and others, 2004; Misut

The U.S. Geological Survey's Strategy to Evaluate Persistent Contaminant Hazards Resulting from Sea Level Rise and Storm-derived Disturbances SCoRR: Sediment-bound Contaminant Resiliency and Response Strategy Project Page Natural and anthropogenic contaminants, pathogens, and viruses are found in soils and sediments throughout the United States. Enhanced dispersion and concentration of these

Background The Long Island-New Jersey (LINJ) coastal drainages NAWQA study is one of the 1994 set and is coordinated from our West Trenton, NJ office. Tasks for the first two years, 1994-95, included staffing, developing a liaison process, analyzing existing data, and designing a data collection program that started in 1996. These planning activities lead to the study design for 3 years of inte

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is collaborating with the New York Department of State (NYDOS) Office of Planning and Development to prepare a new Long Island South Shore Estuary Reserve (SSER) Coordinated Water Resources Monitoring Strategy (CWRMS). Since 2000, when the last CWRMS was published, numerous research projects and studies are demonstrating several new threats to the ecologic health

Problem Dissolved oxygen (DO) is an important indicator of water quality that until recently has been cost-prohibitive to monitor extensively in both space and time. Continuous water-quality data, particularly in coastal environments with bidirectional tidal flow, is necessary for resource managers to understand the dynamic changes in water quality that occur tidally, daily, seasonally, and durin

Introduction As a result of storage and disposal practices at a former Manufactured Gas Plant, or MGP, in Bay Shore, NY, a variety of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been detected at high concentrations in the surficial, upper glacial aquifer of Long Island. Levels of PAHs initially detected over 10 years ago were in the parts-per-thousand range within a groundwater contaminant plume.

Problem Coastal communities are susceptible to damage from coastal storms and associated storm surge, and although tidal wetlands provide a buffer against shoreline erosion and aid in shoreline stabilization, they too are vulnerable to the action of storms. Tidal wetland dynamics need to be better understood, as they are also intrinsically valuable as nursery, feeding, and refuge areas for many