GIS

USGS researchers and heir partners are capturing and banding birds that use man-made habitats to gather data on species occurrence, abundance, and energetic condition during autumn migration.

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.

USGS WARC first implemented geographic information systems (GIS) in 1980 to assist in monitoring the nature and extent of wetland habitat changes. Today, WARC geographers and support staff create, maintain, and use geospatial data to analyze restoration efforts in Louisiana.

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.

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.

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.

The scientists at the Wetland and Aquatic Science Center (WARC) have provided coastal restoration project managers and decision makers with GIS planning, database and custom application capacity since 1992. The scope and complexity of this support has increased over the years and has resulted in the development of a comprehensive geospatial and advanced application teams that provide decision...

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.

Turbid water conditions make the delineation and characterization of benthic habitats difficult by traditional in situ and remote sensing methods. Consequently, only a small fraction of this valuable resource has been mapped or characterized.

Using ecological and geographical data, WARC researchers and their partners are analyzing avian and benthic sampling on Whiskey Island and Caminda Headland to compare pre- and post-restoration aspects of habitat occupancy, habitat availability, habitat use, and kernal density estimation.

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.