Images

Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center drone pilot, Emily Sturdivant, lands a drone on target at the 2017 Woods Hole Science Stroll

Josh Logan operates a drone carrying a precision GPS and special camera to map the shore at Long Beach, Washington. USGS scientists used the same system for detailed mapping of beaches beside Monterey Bay, California. 

Flow from San Gregorio Creek in San Gregorio, California is often blocked by a natural sand levee when the flow is not strong enough to push through to the Pacific Ocean.

Instrument package mounted to the seaward slope of a coral reef off southwestern Puerto Rico.

Left to right: In July 2017 Tim Elfers (USGS), Hannah Drummond (WA State Dept. of Ecology), Heather Weiner (WA State Dept. of Ecology), Andrew Stevens (USGS), and Andy Ritchie (USGS) used handheld computers and backpack-mounted GPS equipment to record topography along a beach near the mouth of the Elwha River.

Joseph Terrano of the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center retrieves a sediment sample from under the marsh grass. Scientists installed several Net Sediment Tiles (NST) on the surface of the marsh to measure sediment deposition.

Lead-in to the Mud Creek slide UAS (drone) footage, Big Sur, California, July 19. 2017.

The small computer, or “micro-controller,” at the bottom of this photo controls the operation of two video cameras mounted on the 10-story Dream Inn hotel in Santa Cruz, California.

Near San Simeon, view looks north up Highway 1 along the California coast toward Big Sur.

Drone’s-eye views of the toe of the Mud Creek landslide, from videos shot by Shawn Harrison on July 12, 2017

Sediment consolidation in an oedometer provides constraints on how much the reservoir sediment is likely to compact while methane from the reservoir’s gas hydrate is extracted as an energy resource.  Compaction data helps engineers optimize the construction and operation of wells that target gas hydrate reservoirs.

Preliminary seafloor bathymetry (shown in colors) collected by the USGS research vessel Parke Snavely on July 11, 2017. Relative depths shown in color, superimposed on a shaded-relief map from the June 26 USGS air-photo survey. Note white data gap next to the shore where water was too shallow for the Snavely to map.

Screen shot of eerial imagery from unmanned aerial systems (UAS) flights over the Lake Ontario shoreline at Braddock Bay, New York, July 10 to 11, 2017

USGS scientists continue to monitor the slide by collecting imagery every couple of weeks, weather permitting. Pilot Bob Van Wagenen, contracted through the Department of the Interior’s Office of Aviation Services, takes air photos for Jon Warrick’s Big Sur Landslide team, flying out of the Watsonville Municipal Airport in a Cessna 182R.

The Geospace Navigator bird is a streamer depth control device, used with a high-resolution seismic system to regulate and record the depth of the streamer.

The Geospace Navigator bird is a streamer depth control device, used with a high-resolution seismic system to regulate and record the depth of the streamer.

The Geospace Navigator bird is a streamer depth control device, used with a high-resolution seismic system to regulate and record the depth of the streamer.

Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images of fossilized diatom specimens (microfossils). Diatoms are microscopic phytoplankton (algae) that are found in aquatic environments all over the world. Plankton species have preferences for different water and environmental conditions, such as salt or fresh water, attaching to sand or vegetation, or river versus estuary.

Multichannel seismic-reflection profile showing deformed and offset sediment layers below the outer continental shelf west of Sitka. The Sitka Sound fault is one of more than a dozen previously unmapped faults discovered in the July 2017 seismic-reflection data.

Multichannel seismic-reflection profile showing deformed sediment layers on the Pacific plate, just seaward of the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather fault near the south end of the study area. Location of profile shown by southern-most yellow line on trackline map, near Noyes Cyn. (Canyon).

Research vessel Ocean Starr in Alaska.