Land Use / Land Cover Change

National Wildlife Refuges provide habitat for important fish and wildlife species and services that benefit coastal communities, like storm-surge protection. USGS scientists are helping coastal refuges plan for and adapt to sea-level rise.

For many years, coastal marshes in Texas and Louisiana have served as critical habitat for the mottled duck ( Anas fulvigula ) , which is considered a priority species in the Texas/Louisiana Gulf Coast area.

Barrier islands provide numerous invaluable ecosystem goods and services including storm protection and erosion control for the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, salinity regulation in estuaries, carbon sequestration in marshes, recreation, and tourism. These islands are dynamic environments due to their position at the land-sea interface. Storms, wave energy, tides, currents, and relative...

Critical information predicting condition changes in manatee habitat resulting from the alteration of freshwater flows to estuaries is needed to develop the PSRP Detailed Design and PSRP Operations Plan components and complete consultation under the Endangered Species Act.

Significant damage to coastal communities and surrounding wetlands of the north Atlantic states was caused by Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012, mostly tied to an associated storm surge of record extent and impact.

Field observations over recent decades have confirmed mangrove expansion landward in tropical zones and poleward in temperate saltmarsh settings around the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Prescriptions in the forest habitat management plan for Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge are designed to produce a forest once represented in the Tensas Basin. There are several problems with reconstructing original forests. In most areas, conditions have changed since these forests were cut; particularly, hydrology, soils, and climatic conditions.

Peninsular Florida has a high density of species and ecosystems of conservation concern, as well as many threats to the persistence of native species and their habitats. USGS worked closely with the Peninsular Florida Landscape Conservation Cooperative to define conservation targets to help meet conservation goals.

Peninsular Florida is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change in the United States. With complex socioeconomic and ecology dynamics and a large number of governing agencies involved in conservation planning, USGS worked to created an appropriate framework for landscape conservation cooperative-scale decision-making across current conservation planning agencies and jurisdictions.

The Mississippi barrier islands are dynamic coastal landforms that are the first line of defense between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi mainland coast. These islands are experiencing changes in structure (land area and habitat) and geomorphic processes (erosion and accretion) due to frequent intense storms, relative rise in sea level, and changes in sediment supply. A long-term monitoring...

WARC first implemented geographic information systems (GIS) in 1980 to help monitor the nature and extent of wetland habitat changes. The center continues to use GIS, remote sensing, and other computer based technologies to address a wide range of natural resource related issues.

Long-term capture-recapture research in the Everglades National Park provides baseline information on the Diamondback Terrapin, a species that may be threatened by human disturbances.