Images

Shawn Harrison surveys beach topography using a backpack equipped with precision GPS at Zmudowski State Beach, California. The fog-shrouded Moss Landing Power Plant looms in the background. 

Dann Blackwood, Jon Borden, and Steve Suttles of USGS ready to install moorings in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. USGS scientists measure water velocity, water quality, suspended sediment, and many other values to improve computer models of wetland changes in coastal National Park Service units, including Cape Cod National Seashore.

Jackson Currie maps ocean depths using a personal watercraft equipped with precision GPS and sonar near Capitola, California

Shawn Harrison surveys beach topography using a precision GPS backpack on Twin Lakes State Beach, California. USGS researchers have measured coastal sediment supply and transport patterns in northern Monterey Bay for five years. Twice each year they survey the coast from Santa Cruz to Moss Landing with a variety of devices.

University of Washington's research vessel R/V Barnes is loaded with the USGS multichannel seismic system components GeoEel, Chirp, and boom plates.

High-resolution (10-meter per pixel) digital elevation model (DEM) of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, using both bathymetry and topography data relative to current modern datum of North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88). This DEM is the result of collaborative efforts of the U.S.

Exposed bedrock on the beach during very low (negative) tide at Isla Vista, California.

Dann Blackwood and Jon Borden inspect a current meter retrieved from the ocean using the research boat Muddy Waters near Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

The house with the USGS BeachCam is in the center of this image, taken Feb. 14, 2017 after a much smaller Noreaster. Visible in the foreground on the left are the remnants of the artificial dune (completely removed by the March 2018 storm), and on the right is the engineered protection put in place by private property owners. 

Exposed bedrock on the beach, below the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Installing large boulders as rip rap to armor the shore against further erosion at Goleta Beach in Southern California. The tide is very low (negative).

Exposed bedrock on the beach during very low (negative) tide at Isla Vista, California

Bedrock exposed at low tide along the beach at Isla Vista, California

Beach loss and armoring at Goleta Beach, very low (negative) tide

A net sedimentation tile (NST) is used by scientists to measure surface sediment deposition in wetlands over short time scales. Scientists installed several NSTs on the surface of the marsh to measure sediment deposition. The samples are retrieved and measured in the lab to identify short-term sediment deposition rates on the marsh surface.

USGS oceanographer Dan Hoover uses a GPS-equipped backpack to measure sand elevations near the mouth of the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz, California, January 12, 2017. Surveys like this make long-term studies of coastal change possible.

An atmospheric river, or narrow band of moisture moving from the tropics to the higher latitudes, hit California in early January and brought the first heavy rains of 2017. While these storms help a drought-stricken state, the onslaught of rain triggers floods and mudslides, and fills rising rivers with sediment and debris.

A sonar-equipped personal watercraft mapping the bathymetry underwater near Santa Cruz, Calif.

USGS scientists readying a sonar-equipped boat to map the ocean bottom near Santa Cruz, Calif.

USGS scientist Daniel Hoover mapping the beach at Santa Cruz with a GPS-equipped backpack unit.

 USGS scientists setting up a lidar scanner on the pier to map the beach near Capitola, California.