Images

Scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of agglutinated marsh foraminifera Entzia macrescens.

Calcification monitoring station with a colony of the massive starlet coral, Siderastrea siderea, fastened in place.

Multicores collected from the northern Gulf of Mexico. These cores contain roughly 1 meter of sediment from the seafloor, and represent the past ~2000 years of deposition.

Low dunes near Cape Canaveral launch pads 39A and 39B often overwash during storm events, transporting sand landward. Critical infrastructure may be buried or flooded. In addition, significant landward transport of sand may lead to extensive shoreline erosion.

Fieldtrip participants at the former San Clemente Dam site.

Gerry Hatcher (left) and Shawn Harrison work on their video-camera station atop a hotel in Santa Cruz, California.

Views of Madeira Beach, Florida, produced from a 17-minute video shot on June 20, 2017. Left: Snapshot, or first frame of video. Right: Time-averaged image, sometimes called a “timex,” created by averaging the intensity of light recorded at each spot, or “pixel,” during the 17-minute video.

The 3DR Solo with GoPro Hero4 camera and gimbal. Coming to a survey area near you soon.

Shawn Harrison uses a GPS-equipped backpack to measure sand elevations during a post-storm survey of beaches in Santa Cruz, California. 

Arctica islandica shells have been sectioned with a saw and embedded in epoxy for further analysis.

Tropical Storm Nate's predicted effect on Northern Gulf sandy shorelines, based on landfall as a Category 1 hurricane,  is shown at three intensities. Outer band:  Dune erosion. Middle band: Dune overwash. Inner band: Dune inundation, with potential flooding behind the dune. Credit: USGS Coastal Change Hazard Portal.

Marsh shoreline inundation during high tide at a marsh sampling site around Middle Bay in the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Mississippi.

Photograph of a purple sunrise at Bayou Heron boat ramp in the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Mississippi.

Marsh shoreline inundation during high tide north of a marsh sampling site around Middle Bay in the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Mississippi.

USGS monitors the growth rates of the threatened Elkhorn Coral (Acropora palmata) at Dry Tortugas National Park (pictured) and throughout the Florida Keys, U.S.A.

The USGS uses observations and data collection in the back-barrier environment at Fire Island, NY to inform numerical models.

Looking at the sunset on the Gulf of America through a window of Fort Jefferson on Dry Torgugas National Park.

Joseph Terrano of the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center retrieves a sediment sample from under the marsh grass. Scientists installed several Net Sediment Tiles (NST) on the surface of the marsh to measure sediment deposition.

A rock breakwater and salt marsh planting act as the living shoreline structure along the Fog Point shoreline in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland.

Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images of fossilized diatom specimens (microfossils). Diatoms are microscopic phytoplankton (algae) that are found in aquatic environments all over the world. Plankton species have preferences for different water and environmental conditions, such as salt or fresh water, attaching to sand or vegetation, or river versus estuary.

Time-averaged image, or “timex,” created by averaging the intensity of light recorded at each spot, or “pixel,” during a 17-minute video taken at Madeira Beach, Florida, on June 20, 2017. Blurred white bands show where waves are breaking. Offshore band shows location of a sand bar.