Archive of Sediment Data Collected in 2014 and 2015 From Around Breton and Gosier Islands, Breton National Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana

Breton Island, located at the southern end of the Chandeleur Islands, supports one of Louisiana's largest historical brown pelican nesting colonies. Although the brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) was delisted as an endangered species in 2009, nesting areas are threatened by continued land loss and are extremely vulnerable to storm impacts. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to restore Breton Island to pre-Hurricane Katrina conditions through rebuilding the shoreface, dune, and back-barrier marsh environments. Prior to restoration, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center Geologic and Morphologic Evolution of Coastal Margins project collected high-resolution geophysical (topography, bathymetry, and sub-bottom profiles) and sedimentologic data from around Breton Island to characterize the geologic framework of the island platform, nearshore, and shelf environments. These data will be used to characterize the geologic framework around Breton Island, identify potential borrow areas for restoration efforts, quantify seafloor change, and provide information for sediment transport and morphologic change models to asses island response to restoration and natural processes.

This data release serves as an archive of sediment data from vibracores, push cores, and submerged grab samples collected from around Breton and Gosier Islands, Louisiana, during two surveys in July 2014 and January 2015 (USGS Field Activity Numbers [FAN] 2014-314-FA [alternate FAN 14BIM04] and 2014-336-FA, respectively). Sedimentologic and stratigraphic metrics (for example, sediment texture or unit thicknesses) derived from these data can be used to ground-truth the geophysical data and characterize potential sand resources or can be incorporated into sediment transport or morphologic change models. Data collection and processing methods are described in Data Series 1037. All 14BIM04 locations and GIS data files presented this report use the projected coordinate system North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83), Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Zone 16 North (16N), all 2104-336-FA locations and GIS data files use the projected coordinate system World Geodetic System of 1984 (WGS84), UTM Zone 16N, and all elevations are North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88) orthometric heights, derived using the GEOID12A geoid model.