St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

The USGS recently lost a dear friend and colleague, Barbara Lidz, who passed away Thursday, September 26, 2019.

USGS participated in the the St. Petersburg Science Festival, an annual event held in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, that invites local schools and the science-interested public to come explore topics in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM).

USGS scientists visited numerous locations to set up and remove long-term monitoring instruments, to collect samples, and to monitor and map beaches, rivers, marshes, ocean habitats, and offshore areas. Here’s a quick overview of some fieldwork by our scientists.

Research Graduate Assistant Legna Torres-Garcia participated in the Great American Teach-In on Wednesday, November 13. She attended Douglas L. Jamerson Jr. Elementary Center for Mathematics and Engineering to talk with 3rd and 5th grade students about being an oceanographer.

A recent manuscript published by Research Oceanographer Lauren Toth with academic collaborators suggest that ocean warming is shifting which environments in Pacific Panama will support coral reefs in the future.

Lauren Toth (Research Oceanographer, SPCMSC) published a manuscript this week with academic collaborators showing that the cooling provided to many coral-reef environments by internal waves mitigated thermal stress during the 2015–2016 global El Niño event.

Xan Fredericks, Lidar Coordinator for the CMHRP and the NGP Associate National Map Liaison to Florida, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, has been invited to be the Keynote Speaker for the first-ever GeoFlo Summit.

A video abstract summarizing USGS work published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography was released on the journal’s YouTube channel. The work was completed by four scientists from St. Petersburg Coastal & Marine Science Center and collaborators from NOAA and the Florida Institute of Technology.

Dr. John Lisle gave two oral presentations for the national AGWT conference: “Pathogen Inactivation Rates During Storage of Recharged Water in the Upper Floridan Aquifer” and “Progress on Research into Nutrient Reduction by Microbial Communities During ASR”

Xan Fredericks, Lidar Coordinator for the CMHRP and Associate National Map Liaison to Florida, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands for the NGP, is presenting three sessions at the 57th Annual URISA GIS-Pro Conference.

USGS leads study of microbiological communities associated with gas hydrate, presents coastal change forecast and pre- and post-storm photos of areas affected by Hurricane Dorian, provides foundation for emergency preparedness wherever and whenever disaster strikes, estimates trillions of cubic feet of natural gas hydrate in Alaska, and more in this August-September 2019 issue of Sound...