Images

Research vessel (R/V) Marcus G. Langseth, operated by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's Office of Marine Operations, can deploy several kilometers of cable to collect seismic data from beneath the seafloor.

A sailboat gets stuck under the Murray Street bridge over Santa Cruz Harbor in California, after it was washed free of its dock due to the strength of the tsunami wave from Japan. While the tsunami energy that hit the coast of California was relatively low, the wave energy is concentrated in narrow spaces like harbors.

The March 11, 2011, Tohoku tsunami caused significant damage to ships and docks in Crescent City Harbor in California. A number of ships were sunk within the harbor. Because of extensive sedimentation and potential contaminated debris within the harbor, recovery efforts took more than a year to complete.

Unusually high tides, sometimes called "king tides," offer a preview of coastal flooding likely to result from rising sea level. In this photograph, taken during a king tide on February 17, 2011, waves overtop Pier 14 in San Francisco, California.

A rotary sediment trap deployed in a channel on the reef flat off Puʻukoholā Heiau National Historic Site, Hawaiʻi, designed to collect samples of sediment being transported across the reef.

Jenny White (USGS PCMSC) and Lissa MacVean (USGS PCMSC) deploy an instrumented frame in the shallows of San Pablo Bay (northern San Francisco Bay) from R/V Retriever. The instrument is an ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler).

Bathymetry—the measurement of water depth of a body of water (e.g., ocean, sea, river, bay, lake, etc.)

Estimated coastal inundation (blue shading) at Mission Bay in San Diego, California, using the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) developed for ARkStorm. (From USGS Open-File Report 2010-1312.) 

The ARkStorm scenario led by the USGS and hundreds of scientists and experts from many disciplines details impacts of a scientifically plausible storm similar to the Great California Storm of 1862 in the modern day.

Location of earthquakes as a function of depth and size in the northeastern Caribbean.

Comparison of observed near-bed velocities and modeled near-bed velocities using several bottom-roughness formulations. Velocity vectors are overlaid on map of backscatter from the sea floor showing regions with coarse sand (light color) and fine sand (dark colors). White lines are bathymetry contours.

Simulation results for geomorphic change in Suisun Bay, CA (Ganju and Schoellhamer, 2010)

The Instrumented Pressure Testing Chamber (IPTC). A device for measuring the physical properties of naturally-occurring, hydrate-bearing sediment at nearly in situ pressure conditions

Shaded relief image of Northern Cape Cod Bay, MA

Map of the island of Hispaniola that include the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Fault traces are shown as lines with the following descriptions: barbed=thrust fault; solid=strike-slip fault with arrows showing relative direction of motion; black and white=normal fault.

Sea Level Rise, Subsidence, and Wetland Loss. This video describes causes of wetland loss in the Mississippi River Delta. Rapid land subsidence due to sediment compaction and dewatering increases the rate of submergence in this deltaic system.

Water molecules (1 red oxygen and 2 white hydrogens) form a pentagonal dodecahedron around a methane molecule (1 gray carbon and 4 green hydrogens). This represents 2 of the 8 parts of the typical Structure I gas hydrate molecule.

Map of the Northeastern Caribbean: topography is in shades of green and bathymetry in shades of blue. Fault traces are shown as lines with the following descriptions: barbed=thrust fault; solid=strike-slip fault with arrows showing relative direction of motion; black and white=normal fault. Faults outlined in red have a potential to generate a large earthquake.

Sediment berm placement in the shoreface of northern Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana

Methane seeping on the Virginia margin just shallower than the limit for gas hydrate stability. 

The R/V Rafael performs nearshore geophysical surveys, and includes high resolution sub-bottom profiling, sidescan sonar, and multibeam echosounding in its arsenal of survey capabilities.