Publications

Sea-level rise (SLR) and obstructions to sediment delivery pose challenges to the persistence of estuarine habitats and the ecosystem services they provide. Restoration actions and sediment management strategies may help mitigate such challenges by encouraging the vertical accretion of sediment in and horizontal migration of tidal forests and marshes. We used a process-based soil...

Erosion rates along Alaska's Beaufort Sea coast, among the highest in the world, are negatively impacting communities, industrial and military infrastructure, and wildlife habitat. Decreasing maximal winter ice extent and increasing summer open water duration and extent in the Beaufort Sea may be making the coast more vulnerable to destructive storm waves than during recent, colder...

Our understanding of the up to 7 orders of magnitude partitioning of thallium (Tl) between seawater and ferromanganese (FeMn) deposits rests upon two foundations: (1) being able to quantify the Tl(I)/Tl(III) ratio that reflects the extent of the oxidative scavenging of Tl by vernadite (δ-MnO2), the principle manganate mineral in oxic and suboxic environments, and (2) being able to...

The transition from a global hydrocarbon economy to a green energy economy and the rapidly growing middle class in developing countries are driving the need for considerable new sources of critical materials. Deep-ocean minerals, namely cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts and polymetallic nodules, are two such new resources generating interest. Polymetallic nodules are essentially two...

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) can deliver substantial nutrient and contaminant loads to nearshore coral reefs. Correctly scaling SGD rates from a point source to a reef is generally a linear process involving simplified assumptions on the hydrogeology, bathymetry, and nearshore hydrodynamics that are essential to properly assess SGD scale and impact to individual coral heads...

Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) geoform, substrate, and biotic component geographic information system (GIS) products were developed for the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (U.S. EEZ) of south-central California in the region of Santa Lucia Bank motivated by interest in development of offshore wind-energy capacity and infrastructure. The Bureau of Ocean Energy...

Wave modeling and analysis of sedimentary structures were used to evaluate whether four examples of symmetrical, reversing, or straight-crested bedforms in Gale crater sandstones are preserved wave ripples; deposition by waves would demonstrate that the lake was not covered by ice at that time. Wave modeling indicates that regardless of atmospheric density, winds that exceeded the...

Wildfire and post-fire rainfall have resounding effects on hillslope processes and sediment yields of mountainous landscapes. Yet, it remains unclear how fire–flood sequences influence downstream coastal littoral systems. It is timely to examine terrestrial–coastal connections because climate change is increasing the frequency, size, and intensity of wildfires, altering precipitation...

U.S. coastal economies and communities are facing an unprecedented and growing number of impacts to coastal ecosystems including beach and fishery closures, harmful algal blooms, loss of critical habitat, as well as shoreline damage. This paper synthesizes our present understanding of the dynamics of human and ecosystem health in coastal systems with a focus on the need to better...

This report and accompanying datasets from the U.S. Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flood Hazard Scenarios and Tools Interagency Task Force provide 1) sea level rise scenarios to 2150 by decade that include estimates of vertical land motion and 2) a set of extreme water level probabilities for various heights along the U.S. coastline. These data are available at 1-degree grids along the U.S...

The Upper Cretaceous–Pliocene strata of New Zealand record ~100 m.y. of Zealandia’s evolution, including development of the Hikurangi convergent margin and Alpine transform plate boundary. A comprehensive, new detrital zircon U-Pb data set (8315 analyses from 61 samples) was generated along a ~700 km transect of the East Coast Basin of New Zealand. Age distributions were analyzed and...

Segmentation, or the classification of pixels (grid cells) in imagery, is ubiquitously applied in the natural sciences. Manual methods are often prohibitively time-consuming, especially those images consisting of small objects and/or significant spatial heterogeneity of colors or textures. Labeling complicated regions of transition that in Earth surface imagery are represented by...