As part of the USGS Coral Reef Project, the USGS is working on the west coast of Guam to help determine the effects of sedimentation in nearshore waters.
Guam coastal imagery and waves
Webcams show coastal imagery and wave characteristics near Adelup Point, Guam.
USGS Coral Reef Project
Learn more about our Coral Reef Project, our research topics, and study locations.
Overview
The Territory of Guam is an organized unincorporated territory of the United States. The island itself is 30 miles (48 km) long and 4 mi (6 km) to 12 mi (19 km) wide. It is the southernmost island in the Marianas island chain and is the largest island in Micronesia. Unlike many of the northern Marianas islands, Guam is not volcanically active. The northern part of the island is a forested coralline limestone plateau while the south contains volcanic peaks covered in forest and grassland. A coral reef surrounds most of the island, except in areas where bays exist that provide access to small rivers and streams that run down from the hills into the Pacific Ocean and Philippine Sea.
Motivation
Human activity has significantly increased the rate of sedimentation along many areas of Guam’s coastline. These human activities are related primarily to land-management practices, including urban development, unregulated use of off-road vehicles, and illegal wildfires. The wildfires, which are intentionally set by hunters to clear lines of sight and draw in new game, remove the grasses and small trees that stabilize the soil. Typhoons strike Guam frequently, commonly dropping more than 30 cm of rain in 24 hours and flushing the unstabilized soil down to the coast and into the nearshore waters.
The USGS is working with the National Park Service on the west coast of the island to help determine the effects of sedimentation in the nearshore waters, including those of War in the Pacific National Historical Park. This is especially significant because the wet season (July to December), during which time large amounts of unstabilized soil wash down to the ocean, coincides with peak coral spawning and larvae settlement. Other partners in these efforts include NOAA, U.S. Coral Reef Task Force (USCRTF) Guam Local Action Strategy (LAS) for Land-Based Pollution (LBP), University of Guam, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI).
Guam is a U.S. island territory in the Western Pacific, the southernmost island in the Marianas island chain and the largest island in Micronesia. Guam is just one of the USGS Coral Reef Project's study locations.
Reef Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes
Role of Reefs in Coastal Protection
Reef Resource Assessments - Planning for the Future
Hydrogeology and Reef Health
Climate Change and Land-use Histories
- Overview
As part of the USGS Coral Reef Project, the USGS is working on the west coast of Guam to help determine the effects of sedimentation in nearshore waters.
Guam coastal imagery and waves
Webcams show coastal imagery and wave characteristics near Adelup Point, Guam.
USGS Coral Reef Project
Learn more about our Coral Reef Project, our research topics, and study locations.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. Visit Media to see details.Satellite photo of Guam from NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite's Advanced Land Imager (ALI). Overview
The Territory of Guam is an organized unincorporated territory of the United States. The island itself is 30 miles (48 km) long and 4 mi (6 km) to 12 mi (19 km) wide. It is the southernmost island in the Marianas island chain and is the largest island in Micronesia. Unlike many of the northern Marianas islands, Guam is not volcanically active. The northern part of the island is a forested coralline limestone plateau while the south contains volcanic peaks covered in forest and grassland. A coral reef surrounds most of the island, except in areas where bays exist that provide access to small rivers and streams that run down from the hills into the Pacific Ocean and Philippine Sea.
Motivation
Human activity has significantly increased the rate of sedimentation along many areas of Guam’s coastline. These human activities are related primarily to land-management practices, including urban development, unregulated use of off-road vehicles, and illegal wildfires. The wildfires, which are intentionally set by hunters to clear lines of sight and draw in new game, remove the grasses and small trees that stabilize the soil. Typhoons strike Guam frequently, commonly dropping more than 30 cm of rain in 24 hours and flushing the unstabilized soil down to the coast and into the nearshore waters.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.Underwater photograph of a wave breaking over the shallow fringing coral reef flat in Tumon Bay, Guam. The USGS is working with the National Park Service on the west coast of the island to help determine the effects of sedimentation in the nearshore waters, including those of War in the Pacific National Historical Park. This is especially significant because the wet season (July to December), during which time large amounts of unstabilized soil wash down to the ocean, coincides with peak coral spawning and larvae settlement. Other partners in these efforts include NOAA, U.S. Coral Reef Task Force (USCRTF) Guam Local Action Strategy (LAS) for Land-Based Pollution (LBP), University of Guam, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI).
- Science
Guam is a U.S. island territory in the Western Pacific, the southernmost island in the Marianas island chain and the largest island in Micronesia. Guam is just one of the USGS Coral Reef Project's study locations.
Reef Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes
As part of the USGS Coral Reef Project, the overall objective of this research effort is to better understand how circulation and sediment processes impact coral reefs and their adjacent coastlines.Role of Reefs in Coastal Protection
We are combining ocean, engineering, ecologic, social, and economic modeling to provide a high-resolution, rigorous, spatially-explicit valuation of the coastal flood protection benefits provided by coral reefs and the cost effectiveness of reef restoration for enhancing those benefits.Reef Resource Assessments - Planning for the Future
We are mapping and assessing all of the important geologic and oceanographic factors to identify those coral reefs most at risk and those reefs that are potentially the most resilient and the most likely to recover from natural and human-driven impacts.Hydrogeology and Reef Health
As part of the USGS Coral Reef Project, we are conducting geophysical and geochemical research to address questions about coastal groundwater-to-reef flow and coral reef health, with the goal of informing management decisions related to planning and implementing activities in priority watershed-coral reef systems.Climate Change and Land-use Histories
As part of the USGS Coral Reef Project, we are developing new and unique oceanographic and environmental archives from coral skeleton records to better understand the compounding effects of land-use and environmental change on coral reef health. - Data
- Publications
- Partners