Adaptive Management

State and Federal agencies, including USGS, are working together to assess the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to determine appropriate restoration actions to restore natural resources, ecological services, and recreational services injured or lost due to the incident.

USGS scientists are conducting research to understand how estuary fisheries are affected by the the timing and/or magnitude of freshwater discharge into Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana.

WARC researchers are providing support to Louisiana Monitoring and Adaptive Management activities.

Researchers are investigating beach compaction, the incubation environment for turtle nests, and shorebird nest abundance at beaches throughout the southeastern United States to better understand the impacts of beach compaction to nesting turtles and foraging seabirds.

The USGS is participating in the Louisiana-Trustee Implementation Group Monitoring and Adaptive Management work group to assess the injuries caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to select the appropriate restoration measures to compensate the public for the injury to coastal and marine resources.

The Mississippi barrier islands are dynamic coastal landforms that are the first line of defense between the Gulf and the Mississippi mainland coast. These islands are experiencing changes in structure (land area and habitat) and geomorphic processes (erosion and accretion) due to frequent intense storms, relative rise in sea level, and changes in sediment supply. A long-term monitoring and...

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.

The USGS Joint Ecosystem Modeling team will work with partners to identify and develop decision support tools for Everglades water management.

The Joint Ecosystem Modeling team will run a suite of 13 ecological models to provide insight into alternative restoration plans' ecological performance, unintended ecological conditions, and potential conflicts with other Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) goals.

USGS will provide support to the Large-scale Marsh Creation – Upper Barataria Component Project by monitoring change in the area of land and water, and recovery of vegetation and elevation over time.

The USGS Joint Ecosystem Modeling team will use Bayesian networks to build a spatially explicit Everglades Vulnerability Analysis module based on current knowledge and existing data on fish density and biomass trends on the landscape.

USGS is collaborating with partners to develop a scientific vision for freshwater Mussel research.