GIS

Eighteen USGS coastal scientists from all four coasts of the conterminous United States are working together to advance the understanding of climate change and sea-level rise impacts to coastal wetlands.

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.

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 researchers will quantify wetland change and wetland vegetation community type change through the analyses of aerial vegetation survey data and investigate potential relationships between Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and marsh elevation change.

USGS will deploy a small, portable radar aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel to measure the abundance, geographic distribution, and flight altitude of birds migrating across the continental shelf of the northern Gulf.

In order to enhance habitat for nesting Brown Pelicans, terns, Black Skimmers, and gulls, the USFWS has contracted with USGS to conduct project monitoring on North Breton Island from FY23 to FY31. Monitoring conducted by USGS will facilitate evaluation of habitat characteristics and determine restoration success or need for adaptive management.

The USGS is collaborating with researchers from other agencies, academia, and industry to predict coastal impacts from hurricanes. The results from this study will better inform coastal morphological change models, which will lead to improved hurricane impact projections.

Researchers at WARC will use data and models to produce probabilistic maps of current and future wetland inundation, coastal wetland extent, and coastal and wetland trangression.

Researchers will use a multi-scale approach to determine how barrier construction and lighting may impact migratory birds in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

The USGS partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its conservation partners to develop 16 Biological Planning Units (BPU) and six Aquatic Extensions and compile population objectives for 166 species that are representative of habitats within each BPU.

WARC researchers partnered with Gulf Sturgeon decision makers and biologists to develop a Bayesian network model that uses habitat characteristics to predict the quantity of juvenile winter foraging habitat under alternative river discharge and timing of juvenile arrival scenarios.

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 of Mexico.