Images

Image 2A. A healthy coastal dune, which is wide, covered with vegetation, and rises to a tall crest, on Ponquogue Beach, Long Island, NY. 

Image 2B. A tall, vegetated dune at Ponquogue Beach, Long Island, New York, with the dune toe and dune crest visible. Extended dune development has created a wide additional dune portion seaward of the existing dune toe/base, known as an embryonic dune.

Image 2A: A typical beach system east of Shinnecock Inlet on Long Island, NY, near Ponquogue Beach, with a developed berm, dune toe/base, and dune crest. The dune is healthy, with a wide vegetated section leading up to a tall crest.

Image 2A. A typical beach system east of Shinnecock Inlet on Long Island, NY, near Ponquogue Beach, with a developed berm, dune toe/base, and dune crest. The dune is healthy, with a wide vegetated section leading up to a tall crest.

Dauphin Island, Alabama. Map views of post-storm difference grids for Hurricanes Ivan (A) and Katrina (B), and vertical photography of the same location (C). The lidar images show elevation gains (green) and losses (red).

Dauphin Island, Alabama. Three-dimensional views of island topography (A-C), post-Katrina oblique aerial photograph (D), and differences in topography from Hurricanes Ivan (E) and Katrina (F). The view is along the island, looking from east to west, with the Gulf of Mexico to the left and Mississippi Sound to the right.

The top image was taken off the coast of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, in July 1998 by researchers at the University of New Orleans. In this image, notice the large multi-story houses, some of which are built on stilts to protect the homes from flooding. The bottom image shows the same location on August 31, 2005, two days after landfall of Hurricane Katrina.

In the top image, taken in 1998, notice the pier, pier house, and the antebellum house. The bottom image shows the same location on August 31, 2005, two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. This photo shows the complete destruction of these landmarks.

The top image, taken off the coast of Waveland, Mississippi, in July 1998, shows several large oceanfront homes, and thick wooded vegetation bordering the sandy beach. The bottom image shows the same location on August 31, 2005, two days after landfall of Hurricane Katrina.

Leptogorgia chilensis, Stylaster californicus, and a painted greenling (Oxylebius pictus) at 42 meters depth on Farnsworth Bank.

Coral reef off the Florida Keys.

Looking south over the coral reef surrounding Loggerhead Key, Dry Tortugas National Park. Dry Tortugas Lighthouse stands on Loggerhead Key. To the right in the background is Garden Key, where civil-war era Fort Jefferson is located.

The lower two floors of the five-story building in the center of these photos have collapsed and the third floor has fallen to ground level.

Photograph of the Florida coastline shows storm damage after Hurricane Jeanne's passage.

The Weedon Island Preserve is a 3,190-acre coastal system in Tampa Bay, Florida that is comprised of aquatic and upland ecosystems.

Dr. Christina Kellogg emerges from the submersible Delta after collecting coral samples in the Aleutian Islands in 2004.

Image 2C. A view taken from a rooftop of Madeira Beach in Florida, showing very low, almost flat dunes, offering little protection during storms.

A beach home with exposed support columns at the edge of an eroded dune, Figure Eight Island, NC, 2004. High water at the coast can severely damage beaches and dunes putting coastal homes are risk of being undermined by the removal of sand during storms. 

Here are shown a series of photographs of a rice coral (Montipora capitata) shaded with light filters during a natural “coral bleaching” event observed during anomalously high ocean temperatures in Autumn of 2004 on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi.

Zoomed in aerial photograph of a home on the beach near Stuart, Florida, severely damaged by Hurricane Jeanne in September 2004.

Image 3B. This beach on Figure Eight Island, NC lost its dune in an earlier storm, so residents used sandbags to serve as a make-shift temporary wall to mitigate erosion from future storms.