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Environmental Quality and Contaminants

Floodwaters and inundation in urban environments have the potential to introduce and expose coastal and aquatic environments to chemical and microbial contaminants. Potential contaminant sources include debris, combined sewer overflows and inundated infrastructure such as gas station, landfills, chemical storage facilities, hazardous waste sites and saltwater intrusion. USGS scientists measure, monitor and characterize the persisting risk of exposure to both human and ecological systems in the built environment as well as in natural areas. Research includes characterizing these storm-released contaminants and water-quality changes as well as understanding how these contaminants accumulate in sediments or what conditions cause them to persist, move and further impact ecosystem health.

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sunset over wetland

Estuarine Processes, Hazards, and Ecosystems

Estuarine processes, hazards, and ecosystems describes several interdisciplinary projects that aim to quantify and understand estuarine processes through observations and numerical modeling. Both the spatial and temporal scales of these mechanisms are important, and therefore require modern instrumentation and state-of-the-art hydrodynamic models. These projects are led from the U.S. Geological...
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Chesapeake Bay Activities, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center, Hurricane Sandy, USGS Science in Long Island Sound and its Watershed
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Estuarine Processes, Hazards, and Ecosystems

Estuarine processes, hazards, and ecosystems describes several interdisciplinary projects that aim to quantify and understand estuarine processes through observations and numerical modeling. Both the spatial and temporal scales of these mechanisms are important, and therefore require modern instrumentation and state-of-the-art hydrodynamic models. These projects are led from the U.S. Geological...
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Satellite view of Hurricane Sandy

Promoting USGS Research on Environmental Impacts of a Major Storm – Hurricane Sandy

Support tasks performed by the WARC Advanced Applications Team for Hurricane Sandy-related projects include aerial imagery capture and processing, standards-compliant data formatting and transformation, metadata creation, and visualization of data in a spatial context.
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center , Hurricane Sandy, Hurricanes
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Promoting USGS Research on Environmental Impacts of a Major Storm – Hurricane Sandy

Support tasks performed by the WARC Advanced Applications Team for Hurricane Sandy-related projects include aerial imagery capture and processing, standards-compliant data formatting and transformation, metadata creation, and visualization of data in a spatial context.
Learn More