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Publications

Explore scientific publications from the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center.

Filter Total Items: 912

Rapid inundation of the southern Florida coastline despite low relative sea-level rise rates during the late-Holocene

Sediment cores from Florida Bay, Everglades National Park were examined to determine ecosystem response to relative sea-level rise (RSLR) over the Holocene. High-resolution multiproxy analysis from four sites show freshwater wetlands transitioned to mangrove environments 4–3.6 ka, followed by estuarine environments 3.4–2.8 ka, during a period of enhanced climate variability. We calculate a RSLR ra
Authors
Miriam Jones, G. Lynn Wingard, Bethany Stackhouse, Katherine Keller, Debra A. Willard, Marci E. Marot, Bryan D. Landacre, Christopher E. Bernhardt

Combining numerical and statistical models to predict storm-induced dune erosion

Dune erosion is an important aspect to consider when assessing coastal flood risk, as dune elevation loss makes the protected areas more susceptible to flooding. However, most advanced dune erosion numerical models are computationally expensive, which hinders their application in early-warning systems. Based on a combination of probabilistic and process-based numerical modeling, we develop an effi
Authors
Victor Malagon-Santos, Thomas Wahl, Joseph W Long, Davina Passeri, Nathaniel G. Plant

Council Monitoring and Assessment Program (CMAP): Inventory of existing water quality and habitat monitoring, and mapping metadata for Gulf of Mexico Programs

Under the Council-Selected Restoration Component of the RESTORE Act, the Council develops Funded Priority Lists (FPLs) that describe the projects and programs it will fund. Projects and programs funded through this component must be in furtherance of the goals and objectives of the Council’s Comprehensive Plan and address at least one of the restoration criteria identified in the RESTORE Act. The
Authors
Julie Bosch, Heidi Burkart, Bogdan Chivoiu, Randy Clark, Chris Clement, Nicholas Enwright, Steve Giordano, Chris Jeffrey, Edward Johnson, Rheannon M. Hart, Sarah Hile, Jacob Howell, Claudia Laurenzano, Michael T. Lee, Terrence A. McCloskey, Terry McTigue, Michelle B. Meyers, Scott Mize, Mark E. Monaco, Kevin Owen, Richard A. Rebich, Samuel H. Rendon, Ali Robertson, Thomas Sample, Gregory D. Steyer, Kevin J. Suir, Christopher M. Swarzenski, Katie Watson

Forecasts of coastal change hazards

Model predictions of severe storm impacts provide coastal residents, emergency managers, and partner organizations valuable predictive information for planning and response to extreme storm events. The foundation of this work is a USGS-developed numerical model to forecast storm-induced coastal water levels and expected coastal change, including dune erosion, overwash, and inundation. The model is
Authors
Kara S. Doran, Hilary F. Stockdon, Joseph Long, Nathaniel G. Plant

The presence of antibiotic resistance genes in coastal soil and sediment samples from the eastern seaboard of the USA

Infections from antibiotic resistant microorganisms are considered to be one of the greatest global public health challenges that result in huge annual economic losses. While genes that impart resistance to antibiotics (AbR) existed long before the discovery and use of antibiotics, anthropogenic uses of antibiotics in agriculture, domesticated animals, and humans are known to influence the prevale
Authors
Dale W. Griffin, William Benzel, Shawn C. Fisher, Michael J. Focazio, Luke R. Iwanowicz, Keith A. Loftin, Timothy J. Reilly, Daniel Jones

Spatial conservation planning under uncertainty: Adapting to climate change risks using modern portfolio theory

Climate change and urban growth impact habitats, species, and ecosystem services. To buffer against global change, an established adaptation strategy is designing protected areas to increase representation and complementarity of biodiversity features. Uncertainty regarding the scale and magnitude of landscape change complicates reserve planning and exposes decision makers to risk of failing to mee
Authors
Mitchell J. Eaton, Simeon Yurek, Zulqarnain Haider, Julien Martin, Fred Johnson, Bradley Udell, Hadi Charkhgard, Changhyun Kwon

iCoast – Did the Coast Change?: Storm-impact model verification using citizen scientists

The USGS provides model predictions of severe storm impacts prior to landfall based on pre-storm morphology and predicted total water levels, including waves and surge. Presented in near real time on the USGS Coastal Change Hazard Portal, they provide coastal residents, scientists, and emergency managers valuable coastal response information. iCoast – Did the Coast Change?, an online tool for comp
Authors
Karen L. M. Morgan, Nathaniel G. Plant, Hilary F. Stockdon, Richard J. Snell

Upwelling buffers climate change impacts on coral reefs of the eastern tropical Pacific

Corals of the eastern tropical Pacific live in a marginal and oceanographically dynamic environment. Along the Pacific coast of Panamá, stronger seasonal upwelling in the Gulf of Panamá in the east transitions to weaker upwelling in the Gulf of Chiriquí in the west, resulting in complex regional oceanographic conditions that drive differential coral-reef growth. Over millennial timescales, reefs i
Authors
Carly J. Randall, Lauren Toth, James J Leichter, Juan L Mate, Richard B. Aronson

Enhanced El Niño-Southern Oscillation variability in recent decades

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) represents the largest source of year-to-year global climate variability. While Earth system models suggest a range of possible shifts in ENSO properties under continued greenhouse gas forcing, many centuries of preindustrial climate data are required to detect a potential shift in the properties of recent ENSO extremes. Here we reconstruct the strength of E
Authors
Pamela R. Grothe, Kim M. Cobb, Giovanni Liguori, Emanuele Di Lorenzo, Antonietta Capotondi, Yanbin Lu, Hai Cheng, R. Lawrence Edwards, John R. Southon, Guaciara M. Santos, Daniel M. Decampo, Jean Lynch-Stieglitz, Tianran Chen, Hussein R. Sayani, Diane M. Thompson, Jessica L. Conroy, Andrea L. Moore, Kayla Townsend, Melat Hagos, Gemma O’Connor, Lauren Toth

Microbiomes of stony and soft deep-sea corals share rare core bacteria

Background: Numerous studies have shown that bacteria form stable associations with host corals and have focused on identifying conserved “core microbiomes” of bacterial associates inferred to be serving key roles in the coral holobiont. Because studies tend to focus on only stony corals (order Scleractinia) or soft corals (order Alcyonacea), it is currently unknown if there are conserved bacteria
Authors
Christina A. Kellogg

The unprecedented loss of Florida's reef-building corals and the emergence of a novel coral-reef assemblage

Over the last half century, climate change, coral disease, and other anthropogenic disturbances have restructured coral-reef ecosystems on a global scale. The disproportionate loss of once-dominant, reef-building taxa has facilitated relative increases in the abundance of “weedy” or stress-tolerant coral species. Although the recent transformation of coral-reef assemblages is unprecedented on ecol
Authors
Lauren Toth, Anastasios Stathakopoulos, Ilsa B. Kuffner, Robert R. Ruzicka, Michael A. Colella, Eugene A. Shinn

Application of sediment end-member analysis for understanding sediment fluxes, northern Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana

We analyzed grain-size distributions (GSDs) from a time-series of sediment samples to evaluate sediment transport following anthropogenic sand-berm emplacement at the northern Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana. End-member analysis (EMA) was applied to compare the end-member (EM) GSD of a known sediment source to GSDs from surrounding environments and characterize the physical redistribution of source
Authors
Julie Bernier, Jennifer L. Miselis, Noreen A. Buster, James G. Flocks