Hydrological Alteration

The USGS collaborated with the Miccosukee and Seminole Tribes to co-design a dashboard mock-up for a real-time web application that monitors tree island health in the Everglades.

To sustain economic and ecologically viable ecosystems into the future, USGS is developing freshwater delivery targets for water flowing southward into Everglades National Park by integrating climate and sea level projections, hydrologic modeling, and ecological modeling to forecast ecosystem responses to future freshwater availability scenarios.

USGS is collaborating with partners to assess past and current CyanoHABs for the development of a predictive model and forecasting system for Lake Pontchartrain Estuary. This technology can be beneficial for informing future planning of water resource development projects, and the water management of the estuary.

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.

The USGS will establish Rod Surface Elevation Tables at five National Wildlife Refuges on the Texas coast. This work will support climate adaptation and resilience planning by identifying areas susceptible to loss and degradation due to sea-level rise and extreme climatic events along the Texas Gulf Coast.

USGS researchers will will survey elevation and vegetation in wetlands and vegetated dunes on Horn, Petite Bois, and Ship Islands; Correct the best available lidar-based digital elevation model; estimate inundation for the Gulf Islands National Seashore under various water levels and relative sea-level rise scenarios; and quantify and predict potential marsh migration for the Gulf Islands National...

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

WARC will assess Cape Sable seaside sparrow population response and viability under different management and habitat change scenarios. The USGS EverSparrow model will be run on future scenarios, and differences in the predicted probability of presence and the efficacy of varying conservation strategies will be evaluated.

Mole skinks that occur on Florida’s islands rely on sand beaches, beach berms, and dunes, making them particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surge. USGS researchers predicted the impacts of sea level rise and storm surge on habitat for the Florida Keys mole skink ( Plestiodon egregius egregius), the Cedar Key mole skink ( P. e. insularis), and the Egmont Key mole skink (known from a...

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.

USGS and NPS partners are working together to analyze and synthesize long-term SET-MH measurements to improve understanding of coastal wetland soil elevation change and ecological responses to sea-level rise.