Monitoring

The Bonnet Carré Spillway, located about 28 miles northwest of New Orleans, Louisiana, was constructed in the early 1930s as part of an integrated flood-control structure for the lower Mississippi River Plain. The spillway is designed to divert water from the Mississippi River into Lake Pontchartrain, thus relieving pressure on levees downstream. Opening of the spillway occurs when measured...

Researchers are developing acceleration data logger pop-off packages that can be affixed to sea turtles to collect behavioral patterns of diving, surfacing, and general activity levels.

Since 1998, airborne light detection and ranging, or lidar, capabilities have been developed and utilized to support CMHRP research projects and hazard assessments. Lidar is a remote-sensing technique that measures distance to a target by sending out light energy and detecting how long it takes the reflected pulses to return to the sensor. Lidar data provide information about the elevation, shape...

The goal of the State of Louisiana Barrier Island Comprehensive Monitoring (BICM) program is to provide long-term data on the barrier islands of Louisiana that could be used to plan, design, evaluate, and maintain current and future barrier-island restoration projects.

USGS Texas Water Science Center scientists are collecting physical and chemical water properties at selected Texas artificial reefs to provide the initial foundation to establish the status and long-term trends in the environment and information essential for sound management decisions and long-term planning.

The San Jacinto River is the second largest inflow into Galveston Bay. The USGS Texas Water Science Center collects water-quality samples in the lower reaches of the San Jacinto River over a range of hydrologic conditions to improve our understanding of the variability of nutrient and sediment concentrations in freshwater inflows from the San Jacinto River into Galveston Bay.

The USGS Texas Water Science Center is evaluating the variability of nutrient and sediment concentrations and loads entering Texas bays and estuaries across a range of hydrologic conditions in Galveston Bay (inflow from the Trinity and San Jacinto Rivers), Matagordo Bay (inflow from the Colorado River), San Antonio Bay (inflow from the Guadalupe River), and Nueces Bay (inflow from Nueces River).

Research to identify areas that are most vulnerable to coastal change hazards including beach and dune erosion, long-term shoreline change, and sea-level rise.

The MC252 oil spill introduced hydrocarbons, dispersants, and drilling muds into the Gulf of Mexico, potentially adversely affecting the seafloor environment surrounding the spill site.

Wetland restoration and creation efforts are increasingly proposed as means to compensate for wetland losses. To address the need for evaluating the development of ecosystem structure and function in restored and created wetlands, USGS compared created tidal wetlands sites to natural mangrove wetlands in Tampa Bay, Florida.

To effectively manage an ecosystem, resource managers need a way to evaluate its health and ability to function. Metrics that indicate ecosystem condition - or indicators - can be used to help determine how well management strategies work.

The federally threatened piping plover relies on sand-beach habitat year-round for nesting, foraging, and roosting, habitat that is particularly vulnerable to loss and degradation from coastal development, recreation activities, erosion, and sea-level rise.