Images

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 section is just north of Kirk Creek, at a drainage where mud was washed across the roadway. Plumes of the muddy runoff are clearly visible in the ocean.

California's Highway 1 snakes its way along the steep terrain of the Big Sur coast. The bridge over Villa Creek can be seen in the left of the photo, as well as a retaining wall built under the freeway towards the center. These are just a few of the engineering feats by Caltrans to keep the roadway intact.

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.

The storm that hit California’s coast between Jan. 26 and 28, 2021, blew out a portion of Hwy 1 near Big Sur. On Saturday, a USGS reconnaissance flight snapped this dramatic photo above the Rat Creek drainage showing the debris flow.

A section of Highway 1 along the California coast in Big Sur with more examples of the numerous debris flows and mudslides that occur following a heavy rain. This section is just south of the Rat Creek debris flow that completely washed out a large chunk of the highway.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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