Images

The atmospheric river, a narrow, powerful track of water vapor that can deliver tremendous volumes of rain, hit the central California coast and stalled there between January 26 and 28, 2021 — with catastrophic consequences.

On May 20, 2017, this section of the Big Sur coastline experienced a huge landslide that wiped out scenic coastal Highway 1. By July 2018 the roadway was reopened.

A two-day rainstorm from January 26-28, 2021 caused numerous mudslides, debris flows, and other issues along California's coastal Highway 1 through Big Sur. This is Big Creek Bridge, and Big Creek is still murky. Plumes of the muddy runoff are clearly visible in the ocean.

On Sunday, August 16, 2020 at approximately 3:00 PM PST, the River wildfire ignited in Monterey County, California, just west of the Salinas River Valley.

 Debris flow deposit at the outlet of the Tumalt Creek drainage basin, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon,  following storms in January 2021.

The University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez, the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, and the USGS Landslide Hazards Program collaborated to create educational materials for residents of Puerto Rico to learn about how to prepare for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from landslides.

WHOI/MIT PhD. Student, Sheron Luk, analyses sediment carbon on an Elemental Analyzer at Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center.

Perspective view of large SfM point cloud of region of Fort Funston, CA., without automated data cleaning (masking).

Lab Manager, Adrian Mann, analyzes pore water samples on an Ion Chromatograph.

USGS scientist monitors the burn area following the Grizzly Creek fire of 2020 in Glenwood Canyon, Colorado. 

Remote-Sensing Coastal Change project field collections at the Head of the Meadow Bay in Massachusetts.

USGS samples water within wetlands to understand which environmental drivers impact carbon cycle and sediment accretion. Here USGS staff (Jennifer O'Keefe Suttles) pumps water from at Phragmites wetland, Mashpee, MA, to analyze at the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center Environmental Geochemistry lab.

Burned trees following the 2020 Grizzly Creek fire in Glenwood Canyon, Colorado. 

As part of the Remote Sensing of Coastal Change and Florence Supplemental projects we have been developing novel workflows for repeat-mapping of ­­­coastal environments at order decimeter resolution over up to hundreds of kilometers in a single day, using Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry or SfM, from crewed aerial platforms.

Perspective view of large SfM point cloud of region of Fort Funston, CA., with automated data cleaning (masking). This cleaned data has 50% fewer points.

The U.S. Geological Survey is conducting research to guide the recovery of the threatened Elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata, in Dry Tortugas National Park and throughout the western Atlantic.

Ocean Beach in San Francisco looking north

The U.S. Geological Survey St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center is conducting research to guide the restoration and recovery of the threatened elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata, in Dry Tortugas National Park and throughout the western Atlantic.

The USGS will be using an autonomous surf vehicle, built by Peter Traykovski of WHOI, to map the bathymetry of the Pea Island DUNEX Experiment Site. 

The autonomous surf vehicle, built and controlled remotely  by Peter Traykovski of WHOI, is used to map the bathymetry of the Pea Island DUNEX Experiment Site. 

Tropical Storm Eta affected beaches along Florida's Gulf Coast in November 2020. Some dunes were eroded up to several feet due to the high water levels associated with the storm. Madeira Beach is home to many people and animals, and erosion events such as this can affect both habitat and infrastructure.