Climate Change
Climate Change
The National Climate Change Viewer
Variability in the Earth's climate system affects the location and health of terrestrial and marine ecosystems; the distribution, quantity, and quality of water resources; and the sustainability of human societies. The Climate R&D Program applies geological, geochemical, ecological, and other analyses to document rates, amplitudes, causes, and impacts of climate change through Earth’
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Geologic Records of High Sea Levels
This project studies past high sea levels on coastlines that preserve fossil coral reefs or marine terraces. We ascertain the magnitudes of sea-level high stands by field mapping, stratigraphic measurements, and precise elevation measurements. Geochronology is accomplished by radiocarbon dating of mollusks (for Holocene-to-last-glacial deposits), uranium-series dating of corals (for high-sea...
Holocene Hydroclimate of Western North America
The objectives of this project are to reconstruct detailed histories of Holocene hydroclimate and corresponding environmental change from geological archives such as lake sediment, peat, and wood to more fully understand past, ongoing, and future change and its impacts.
Paleohydrology of Desert Wetlands
Springs and wetlands are among the most highly threatened ecosystems on Earth. Although geographically limited, they support more than 20% of all the threatened and endangered species in the United States. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey are examining the rock record to determine how springs and wetlands responded to abrupt climate change during prehistoric times and the recent geologic...
Terrestrial Rates and Amplitudes of Changes in Ecoclimate Systems (TRACES)
Vegetation changes caused by climatic variations and/or land use may have large impacts on forests, agriculture, rangelands, natural ecosystems, and endangered species. Climate modeling studies indicate that vegetation cover, in turn, has a strong influence on regional climates, and this must be better understood before models can estimate future environmental conditions. To address these issues...
Terrestrial Records of Holocene Climate Change: Fire, climate and humans
Large wildfires have raged across the western Americas in the past decade including the Las Conchas, New Mexico fire that burned 44,000 acres in a single day in 2011 (Orem and Pelletier, 2015, Geomorphology 232: 224-238, and references therein), the 2016 Fort McMurray, Alberta fire that required evacuating an entire city, and the 2015 Alaskan fire season that burned more than 5 million acres...
Patterns in the Landscape – Analyses of Cause and Effect
Understanding the rates and causes of land-use/land-cover (LULC) change helps answer questions about what, where, how, and why the Earth’s surface is changing. Land-surface change results from human activities or natural processes like floods, droughts, and wildfires, and many of these change processes are observable in satellite imagery. The growing historical catalog of satellite images allows...