Solutions

Dauphin Island, Alabama, is the only barrier island providing protection to much of Alabama's coastal natural resources. Severely impacted by repeated extreme events, like Hurricane Katrina and Deepwater Horizon oil spill, USGS and partners are conducting a joint study to evaluate the feasibility of certain alternatives to increase resiliency and sustainability of the island.

The Coastwise Reference Monitoring System was designed to monitor the effectiveness of restoration actions at individual sites, as well as across the entire Louisiana coast.

We are studying how herbicides sprayed onto soil to prevent the establishment of exotic annual grasses such as cheatgrass may impact the health, growth resources and microbiota of soils in sagebrush-steppe, where herbicide use is an important and common tool. Our findings will help make herbicide applications more successful.

Pre-emergent herbicides applied to soil are a primary tool for reducing exotic annual grasses, such as cheatgrass, in sagebrush steppe rangelands. Effective herbicide application can allow existing perennials to grow and spread to outcompete cheatgrass, preventing reinvasion, but most perennials are slow-growing and require more years of relief from annual-grass competition than standard...

After the Soda Wildfire burned nearly 280,000 acres of public and private land in southwest Idaho, the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Emergency and Rehabilitation and Stabilization program (ESR) applied herbicide and seeding treatments to prevent exotic annual grass invasion and restore native vegetation. To reduce the threat of future wildfire, the BLM also constructed a network of linear...

In order to break the annual grass fire-cycle in the sagebrush steppe, land managers use pre-emergent herbicides to reduce annual grass populations and seeding to increase fire-tolerant perennials. These tools must be applied to the same soils in ways that are not counterproductive, and their application must therefore be staggered in time, which we refer to as layering. Livestock grazing can also...

Alaska is simultaneously a landscape of extremes requiring specialized adaptations by plants and animals to survive the winters and a landscape of abundance that supports breeding birds each summer from as far away as Africa. Terrestrial Alaska also supports iconic species such as caribou and muskoxen whose population dynamics, predator/prey relationships and habitat ecology are researched by USGS...

WADEM (Wader Distribution Evaluation Modeling) is a JEM model that estimates species-specific habitat suitability across the landscape for Great Egret ( Ardea alba), White Ibis ( Eudocimus albus), and Wood Stork ( Mycteria americana).

Developing effective living shoreline restoration projects that can withstand hurricanes and storms requires a better understanding of how restoration structures reduce the impact of wave and current energy on marsh edges in estuaries and bays. Without this knowledge, existing living shoreline projects and adaptive management measures are more likely to fail, decreasing the possibility for long...

This study analyzes changes in the extent of land in coastal Louisiana by using an average of 81 datasets (multiple dates of satellite data from 1973 to 2014) for summarizing land and water areas.

The JEM Biological Database offers secure data storage in relational databases, as well as web applications to manage, search, analyze, and report on captured data.

In light of the increase in hurricane frequency and intensity, there is concern about the resilience and sustainability of coastal wetlands. Models can be used to investigatethe impacts of future hurricanes on wetland morphology along the northeast coasts in areas like Jamaica Bay, New York, an area impacted by Hurricane Sandy.