Images

Scientists at the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center use Hydro-MEM, a two-dimensional coastal wetland model that integrates an Advanced Circulation hydrodynamic model with a Marsh Equilibrium Model to project marsh response to sea-level rise.

Coastal bathymetry, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, mapped using lidar and depicted with false-color (purple is deep, orange is shallow). Land areas are depicted with satellite imagery.

East end of Fire Island, showing white sandy beaches and marshes, depicted with airborne imagery, and lidar-derived bathymetric features in the estuary behind the island, in the offshore region, and in the channel connecting the estuary to the ocean. 

Coastal wetland ecosystems in Jamaica Bay, New York, provide important ecosystem services along the highly urbanized Atlantic coast.

Two divers work to collect a long core sample from a coral reef in Florida.

For more than 15 years, the USGS has actively studied natural and human changes to the shoreline, beaches, and dunes at Fire Island.

USGS unmanned aerial system (uas) mapping team on the beach in Dauphin Island, Alabama

Perspective view of coastal bathymetry looking onshore, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, mapped using lidar and depicted with false-color, showing detailed submerged features, including coral reefs.

SPCMSC Research Microbiologist Christina Kellogg loading coral samples into an automated DNA extraction instrument for processing.

A view of a vegetated inland coastline overlooking the water on Dauphin Island, Alabama. The island protects mainland Alabama’s coastal communities and resources from storms, while also providing recreational opportunities (fishing, beach tourism, etc.) and other economic benefits to the local community and state.

A panoramic view on Dauphin Island, Alabama. The island protects mainland Alabama’s coastal communities and resources from storms, while also providing recreational opportunities (fishing, beach tourism, etc.) and other economic benefits to the local community and state.

Aerial photograph looking southwest along Breton Island, Louisiana, taken July 2013

The USGS collaborates with NASA, the University of Florida, National Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to assess coastal erosion hazards affecting space program infrastructure, habitat, and wildlife populations.

Looking south along the Point aux Chênes, Mississippi marsh shoreline during sample collection in October 2018; sediment probe located at the shoreline is used to assist in aligning sample collection along shore perpendicular transect.

A short marsh push core, exhibiting a sandy event layer on top, collected from Point aux Chênes, Mississippi marsh during sample collection in October 2018 for sediment and radiochemical analyses.

USGS Research Oceanographer Lauren Toth and Oceanographer Anastasios Stathakopoulos study a coral-reef core in the USGS’s Core Archive in St. Petersburg, Florida. Photo: Dominique Gallery, USGS.

“The ocean is the closest I can get to an unexplored world, without going into space... I mean, I feel a deep connection to the ocean and its constant rhythms, but when I visit, there's a new discovery or appreciation every time.

Two USGS scientists collect a marsh sediment push core in Grand Bay in October, 2018.

Diadema antillarum, the long-spined sea urchin, is an ecologically important species in Caribbean coral reef habitats where it controls algal growth and coverage and helps keep reef surfaces clear for corals to grow and settle. In early 2022, the remaining D. antillarum populations began experiencing mass mortality in the Caribbean.

Parrotfish grazing on coral within an Acropora palmata framework in Buck Island Reef National Monument

An egret walks in the shallow surf of an undeveloped beach on Dauphin Island, Alabama, with buildings viewed in the background from a different area on the island.