Publications

This report is a compilation of abstracts that correspond to oral presentations and posters presented at the fifth principal investigators workshop of the Southwest Washington Coastal Erosion Study. The workshop was held November 15 - 17, 2000 at the Department of Ecology headquarters building in Olympia, WA. For the fourth consecutive year in November, the workshop convened the entire...

From August 1993 to August 1994, six moorings that measure current, temperature, salinity, and water clarity were deployed along the axis of Monterey Canyon to study the circulation and transport of water and suspended particulate matter through the canyon system. The moorings occupied three sites that are morphologically different: a narrow transverse section (axis width 900 m) at 1450...

The paucity of strong-motion stations near the 1999 Hector Mine earthquake makes it impossible to make instrumental studies of key questions about near-fault strong-motion patterns associated with this event. However, observations of displaced rocks allow a qualitative investigation of these problems. By observing the slope of the desert surface and the frictional coefficient between...

Clustered about the southwest edge of the Colorado Plateau lie many highly extended terranes. Among these are metamorphic core complexes, distinguished by low-angle normal faults with sufficient offset to expose middle crustal rocks at higher elevation relative to the surrounding areas. About 150 km to the southwest, strong extension in the Salton Trough manifests itself very differently...

In response to the 1992 creation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS), the United States Geological Survey (USGS) initiated a multiyear investigation of the Sanctuary continental margin. As part of the investigative effort, this report summarizes the shipboard procedures, subsequent laboratory analyses, and data results from three seafloor sampling cruises conducted on...

This report contains data on the clay mineral content of 250 shelf surface-sediment samples from the California Continental Borderland (Tables 1, 2; Figures 1-7), 79 samples with depth in cores from Santa Monica Bay (Table 3; see Table 1 for surface sediment data for those same cores and for core locations), 24 suspended and 13 bottom sediment samples from rivers draining Southern...

A marine sanctuary is an environment where the interests of science and society meet. Sanctuary managers need access to the best scientific data available that describe the environment and environmental processes in sanctuaries. Seafloor mapping and sampling in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary have revealed new details about the geology, morphology, and active geologic...

The coastal morphology of the Mouth of the Columbia River (MCR) has changed dramatically over the past century. Since the construction of jetties in 1914 and 1917, the inlet deepened and stabilized, the outer ebb delta migrated northward and offshore several kilometers, and the adjacent shorelines to the north and south prograded several hundreds of meters. Recently, high rates of...

Six tripods were deployed at shallow (~14-m) and deep (~24-m) sites on the northern, middle, and southern flanks of the Grays Harbor, Washington, U.S.A. ebb-tidal delta from early October through December, 1999 to measure waves, currents, temperature, and suspended-sediment concentrations as part of a wave-refraction and sediment-transport experiment. Directional wave spectra show that...

A series of coastal zone hazard maps cover the area impacted by Hurricane Hugo (1989) in eastern Puerto Rico. The mapping strategy was to develop a tool for quick visualization of multiple hazards for use by coastal planners, managers, property owners, and potential property owners. The Puerto Rico shoreline is heavily developed in places and also highly compartmentalized in terms of...

Methane is the most abundant organic compound in the Earth's atmosphere. As a powerful greenhouse gas, it has implications for global climate change. Sources of methane to the atmosphere are varied. Depending on the source, methane can contain either modern or ancient carbon. Methane exiting from swamps and wetlands contains modern carbon, whereas methane leaking from petroleum...

Heavy or high-density minerals in the 63-250-_m (micron) size fraction (very fine and fine sand) were analyzed from 36 beach and offshore sites (38 samples) of the Palos Verdes margin to determine the areal and temporal mineralogic distributions and the relation of those distributions to the deposit affected by material discharged from the Los Angeles County Sanitation District sewage...