Images

Patrick Barnard explains how the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) integrates information from the Hazards Exposure Reporting and Analytics (HERA) mapper to understand the social and economic consequences of different flooding scenarios. 

The SQUID-5, or a Structure-from-Motion (SfM) Quantitative Underwater Imaging Device with 5 cameras is a towed surface vehicle with an onboard Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and 5 downward-looking cameras with overlapping views of the seafloor.

A wave breaking over a degraded reef crest at Buck Island National Monument in St. Croix. Wave-breaking in these habitats relies on reef framework built by the elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata, which is now a threatened species throughout the western Atlantic.

This image created using the Continuous Bathymetry and Elevation Models of the Massachusetts Coastal Zone and Continental Shelf, shows the mouth of the Merrimack River, Plum Island and the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.

In collaboration with the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the AIM group conducted UAS aerial surveys looking at vegetation classification/index surrounding a MBL gas flux tower located in Nelson Island Creek, Rowley, Massachusetts.

This image was created using the Continuous Bathymetry and Elevation Models of the Massachusetts Coastal Zone and Continental Shelf, shows Provincetown, MA and the northern section of the Cape Cod National Seashore.

This historic brick Studebaker Building, originally built in 1925, was chosen as the location for the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center in the late 1980s.

This image created using the Continuous Bathymetry and Elevation Models of the Massachusetts Coastal Zone and Continental Shelf, shows the Elizabeth Islands, Vineyard Sound, and Martha’s Vineyard.

Rigorously Valuing the Role of the U.S. Virgin Islands’ Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Digital three-dimensional rendering of the coastal cliffs around Point Dume in Malibu, California. Cliff feature outputs from the Cliff Feature Delineation Tool are shown to conceptually display the cliff delineation process, including cross-shore transects (green), the cliff top line (red), the cliff toe line (blue), and subsidiary cliff features (orange).

Rigorously Valuing the Role of Guam’s Coral Reefs and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

The Coastal Change Hazard (CCH) program’s Stakeholder Engagement and Communication (SEC) component is focused on connecting CCH science to stakeholders to learn more about their needs for data, tools, and information.

Map displaying the distribution of total economic losses (direct building damages and indirect economic disruption) in the U.S. that are prevented from flooding by coral reefs annually. In total, the annual coastal flooding risk reduction benefits provided by U.S. coral reefs exceed \$1.8 billion.

Rigorously Valuing the Role of Hawaiʻi’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Rigorously Valuing the Role of Puerto Rico’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Rigorously Valuing the Role of Florida’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Rigorously Valuing the Role of American Samoa’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Once removed from the pressure core testing tool, this specimen shows that it is not a homogeneous sediment.  The mostly fine-grained sample (dark sediment in all three images) easily breaks apart at a thin layer of coarse-grained sediment (light sediment on the inner core surfaces of images (i) and (ii).

USGS technician Jennifer O’Keefe Suttles stands within a Phragmites stand within the Herring River Estuary, part of the Cape Cod National Seashore. 

 Two UNC mini landers, surrounded by Sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) and pink sea urchins, incubate seawater in situ to enable calculations of methane oxidation rates.

Red plumes burst out from the tops of these chemosynthetic tubeworms, capturing hydrogen sulfide and oxygen from the surrounding water to feed their bacterial endosymbionts. The tubeworm tubes provide a habitat for several benthic animals, including the pale pink branching octocorals seen here