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What We Do - Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program

Scientists and technical staff within the Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program study coastal and ocean resources from shorelines and estuaries to the continental shelf and deep sea, providing expertise, tools, products, and data that address and inform a broad array of resource challenges facing our Nation.

USGS team and R/V Savannah crew prepare to lower the quadpod deployed at the offshore
The USGS team and R/V Savannah crew prepare to lower the quadpod deployed at the offshore site onto the deck during recovery operations.  Note all the hairy encrusting organisms that grew in 3 months.(Credit: Dann Blackwood, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center. Public domain.)

The USGS works with many and varied partners to ensure that our Nation has the information it needs to understand, restore and protect healthy coastal and ocean resources and the communities who depend on them.

More than half of our Nation's population lives within 50 miles of the coast, along productive estuaries and extensive coastlines of the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Caribbean Sea. Healthy coastal and offshore resources are vital to our nation's economy through energy, commerce and shipping, fisheries, tourism and recreation. We rely on new technologies, scientific data and analysis to support the wise use and protection of these resources and also inform policies and decisions that prepare us for extreme events, natural hazards, and climate change.

Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program expertise contributes to the greater USGS mission of providing impartial information on the health of our ecosystems and environment, the natural hazards that threaten us, the natural resources we rely on, the impacts of climate and land-use change, and the core science systems that help us provide timely, relevant, and usable information.

Our major science centers are located in:

Administrative offices are in Reston, Virginia.