Images

 Sara Zeigler (USGS) uses the smartphone data collection app ‘iPlover’ to classify the landscape characteristics in an area immediately surrounding a piping plover nest (here, protected with a black mesh predator exclosure).

USGS scientists are working to model shorebird habitat availability both today and in the future, given processes like sea-level rise, in an effort to support the efficient management of beaches for both people and nesting shorebirds. This photo shows an area on the Rockaway Peninsula where high quality shorebird habitat has been closed off to beach recreation.

The beach-dependent shorebirds project at the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center models current and future habitat availability for nesting shorebirds in an effort to map current and likely future habitat availability on a range of sites along the U.S. Atlantic coast.

Polar bear climbing onto the sea ice after a swim in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. USGS photograph taken June 15, 2014.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Lighter Amphibious Resupply Cargo (LARC) survey vessel towed an Edgetech chirp 512i subbottom profiler mounted on a catamaran sled.

USGS scientist Jennifer Miselis stands on board the US Army Corps of Engineers' (USACE) Lighter Amphibious Resupply Cargo (LARC). USGS collaborated with USACE to analyze coastal change due to Hurricane Sandy. Miselis is preparing to deploy a Chirp sub-bottom profiling system with a towfish attached in between the pontoons to collect sub-seafloor geological data.

Photo from a time-lapse camera looking eastward along the north shore of Barter Island on Alaska’s Arctic coast, June 15, 2014. View the complete time-lapse sequence to see how the coastal bluffs and beach changed during a single summer.

Polar bear lying on the sea ice to dry off after a swim in the Chukchi Sea, Alaska. USGS photograph taken June 15, 2014.

USGS researchers collect repeat geophysical data from the nearshore at Fire Island, NY to study bathymetric change over time.

Eroded dunes on Fire Island, New York, nearly two years after Hurricane Sandy.

A crew of USGS scientists prepares equipment, including personal watercraft, to collect nearshore bathymetry and sub-surface geology data to assess the impacts of Hurricane Sandy.

Highly diverse and resilient reef within Bird Island Marine Protected Area, Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands.

Divers from the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands reef resiliency team conduct assessments of reef resilience in the Marianas archipelago.

Underwater photo of a healthy coral reef.

A buoy instrumented to collect meteorological observations is recovered off Fire Island, NY in 2014.  The data collected is part of a study of the coastal processes that mobilize and transport sediment in the region
 

A remotely operated vessel starts a survey at dawn off Fire Island, NY in 2014.  The data collected is part of a study of the coastal processes that mobilize and transport sediment in the region

USGS tilt current meter (white cylinder) in overwash channel in the Sandwich Town Beach flooded during a Nor'Easter in March 2014

Large swells from the north-northeast with heights up to 5 meters (16 feet) combined with unusually high tides inundated much of the Republic of the Marshall Islands on March 2, 2014.

Waves wash over a road on Roi-Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, during a particularly high tidal event. USGS is studying how slightly reduced rainfall combined with sea-level rise affect freshwater sources on low-lying Pacific coral islands.

Wave-driven flooding and overwash on Roi-Namur Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands