Hazards

This page is a collection of USGS coastal hazard research in Puerto Rico, including shoreline changes, coral reef assessments, and coastal flooding. A brief description of highlighted projects can be found below. All coastal hazard publications, data releases, and news for Puerto Rico can be accessed on this page. Esta página es una recopilación de investigaciones del USGS sobre los riesgos...

Discover USGS products, tools, and data with the Coastal Science Navigator! The Coastal Science Navigator serves as a gateway to USGS Coastal Change Hazards resources and assists users in finding products and tools that will meet their specific needs.

The goal of the estuarine shoreline change project is to define shoreline positions for historical and modern wetland shorelines and calculate rates of change along the U.S. East and Gulf coasts.

DUring Nearshore Event eXperiment (DUNEX) is a multi-agency, academic, and non-governmental organization (NGO) collaborative community experiment designed to study nearshore coastal processes during storm events. The experiment began in 2019 and is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2021. USGS participation in DUNEX will contribute new measurements and models that will increase our...

Coastal environments are dynamic systems that provide high ecological, economical, recreational, and cultural value. Managing coastal systems requires a comprehensive understanding of the complex interactions between geological and ecological processes, as well as the ability to predict both the near-term and long-term impacts of storms and sea-level rise. The Coastal Resource Evaluation for...

Natural processes such as waves, tides, and weather, continually change coastal landscapes. The integrity of coastal homes, businesses, and infrastructure can be threatened by hazards associated with event-driven changes, such as extreme storms and their impacts on beach and dune erosion, or longer-term, cumulative changes associated with coastal and marine processes, such as sea-level rise...

Coastal change forecasts and pre- and post-storm photos documenting coastal change for landfalling storms. Currently responding to Hurricane Dorian.

Fire Island is a 50-km long barrier island along the south shore of Long Island, New York. The island is comprised of seventeen year-round communities; federal, state, and county parks; and supports distinct ecosystems alongside areas of economic and cultural value. In addition to providing resources to its residents, the barrier island also protects the heavily-populated mainland from storm waves...

Assessments include depiction of trends (the past points to the future), updated observations (topography/bathymetry), and predicted sensitivity of barrier island evolution to possible climatologies and restoration plans.

Quantifying changes in morphology and sediment distribution over short time scales will demonstrate how geologic variability influences medium-term barrier island response and near-term barrier island trajectories and help to refine sedimentological boundary conditions for morphologic evolution models.

Numerical models compliment the collection of geophysical data by hindcasting and forecasting sediment transport pathways, natural island trajectories, and berm/island interactions over larger and higher resolution domains and time periods.

Video observations of Sand Key, Florida, are used to monitor a range of coastal processes, for example changes in the shoreline position, both seasonally and due to long-term effects such as sea-level rise, and instances of beach and dune erosion during extreme storm events.