Coastal

This study will employ a space for time substitution to show long-term effects of rising sea-level and increasing salinity on vegetation community structure, primary production and decomposition. Productivity and decomposition rates will be estimated for four wetland plant community types defined by salinity zones and dominant plant species.

Sudden Marsh Dieback - SMD - has been documented for the past two decades throughout coastal areas of the United States. With these large-scale diebacks comes the loss of ecosystem functions and services. USGS scientsts use field work and greenhouse studies to investigate the factors that control the resilience and resistance of coastal salt marshes to SMD.

USGS and partners will identify the causes for the lack of predictive power in some models included in the 2023 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, and suggest ways to improve the models in future Louisiana Coastal Master Plan modeling exercises.

USGS researchers are conducting ground surveys and collecting aerial imagery to understand avian use of restored habitats at Whiskey Island, Shell Island, Cheniere Ronquille, and Breton Island. They will also develop habitat maps to understand how coastal processes and episodic events influence barrier islands.

Researchers at WARC are determining if temporal mismatches between digital elevation models and land cover data can impact estimates of inundation of beach habitat for barrier islands and low-lying beaches off the Gulf Coast of Florida.

While islands are some of the most biodiverse places on earth, they are also among the most threatened. Researchers from WARC and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are assessing the vulnerability of Florida’s coastal islands to inundation from sea-level rise and estimating potential loss of the terrestrial biodiversity on Florida’s islands.

USGS researchers will define the range of elevation targets supporting optimal plant performance and soil strength by identifying the lower and upper thresholds of marsh conversion, and characterize ecosystem development of restored marshes over time to identify the lifetime and sustainability of restored marsh during sea-level rise. This work addresses priority science needs to improve...

The USGS is collaborating with the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) to develop post-restoration barrier island habitat maps for three of the four components associated with the Louisiana Outer Coast Restoration Project

USGS will install and maintain up to six rod surface-elevation table (RSET) and paired accretion monitoring stations at the location of the Maurepas Swamp Alternative-2 Mitigation Project.

In the summer of 2021, instrumented platforms were deployed at Seven Mile Island Living Laboratory, New Jersey to conduct time series measurements of tidal velocity, turbidity, surface elevation, sediment concentration, and suspended sediment characteristics. The collected data will be used to provide decision support to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as they plan dredging activities in the Gulf...

WARC researchers partnered with managers and species experts to develop a Bayesian network model and a geospatial habitat characteristics dataset to predict the number of breeding pairs of Black Skimmer and Gull-billed Tern along the Northern Gulf Coast.

WARC Researchers are comparing tree and root growth, soil CO2 flux, and surface elevation change between fertilized and unfertilized mangrove forests to assess the potential impact of increased nutrient loading and to help rate mangrove stand vulnerability.