Gulf-Wide

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.

Through a collaborative effort with other federal agencies and academic and research institutions, the USGS is working to inform and enhance the protection and management of coral communities in mesophotic and deep benthic areas of the Gulf.

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.

USGS scientists are using a spatially-explicit Bayesian network model to predict the difference between energetic value and energetic demand for stopover habitats for migrating landbirds.

The Gulf Coast Joint Venture (GCJV) was established in 1988 as a result of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, which espouses the restoration of continental waterfowl populations through conservation partnerships in priority habitat regions. Since that time GCJV partners have expanded their mission and purpose to include the provision of habitat to support other priority bird species...

USGS scientists will be analyzing weather surveillance radar observations of birds departing stopover habitats to measure responses to climate change.

This study will examine the potential effects of sea level rise, drought and water extraction by examining tree growth patterns across the Gulf Coast, specifically targeting long-term research plots available in the North American Baldcypress Swamp Network (NABCSN) and the Suwannee River.

USGS works with partners to assess manatee distribution and habitat use throughout the Northern Gulf.

Sudden Marsh Dieback - SMD - has been documented for the past two decades throughout coastal areas of the United States. With these large-scale diebacks comes the loss of ecosystem functions and services. USGS scientsts use field work and greenhouse studies to investigate the factors that control the resilience and resistance of coastal salt marshes to SMD.

The USGS partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its conservation partners to develop 16 Biological Planning Units (BPU) and six Aquatic Extensions and compile population objectives for 166 species that are representative of habitats within each BPU.

WARC researchers partnered with managers and species experts to develop a Bayesian network model and a geospatial habitat characteristics dataset to predict the number of Brown Pelican breeding pairs on islands in the northern Gulf.

WARC researchers partnered with managers and species experts to develop a Bayesian network model and a geospatial habitat characteristics dataset to predict the number of breeding pairs of Black Skimmer and Gull-billed Tern along the Northern Gulf Coast.