Images

This photograph shows two grizzly bears frolic on the tundra near the Avak River on the Chukchi Sea coast of Alaska. Coastal erosion along the Arctic coast is chronic, widespread and potentially accelerating, posing threats to infrastructure important for defense and energy purposes, natural shoreline habitats and nearby Native communities.

This photograph shows snow and ice melt along the rolling hills and coastal bluffs near Cape Sabine on the western Chukchi Sea coast of Alaska.

USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center’s research vessel R/V Parke Snavely motors on the Nisqually Reach of Puget Sound.

Low dunes on Cape Canaveral often overwash during storm events, transporting sand landward. Critical infrastructure may be buried or flooded. In addition, significant landward transport of sand may lead to extensive shoreline erosion. 

Photo showing turtle tracks leading from a nest on a dune at Cape Canaveral.

2009 oblique photos of Cape Cod Bay from a USGS overflight

2009 oblique photos of Cape Cod Bay from a USGS overflight

Kelp greenling fish, about 8 inches long, swims above a seafloor of mixed gravel, cobble, and rock near Half Moon Bay, California.

Marinna Martini, Woods Hole, Coastal and Marine Science Center,  prepares to deploy tripods at three sites along the outer perimeter of Diamond Shoals, North Carolina.

 USGS researchers deploying an instrumented minipod South of Fire Island, NY.

(Top image) Shaded relief of the new multibeam bathymetry along the Puerto Rico Trench illuminated from the northwest. Thin contours indicate bathymetry at 500-m intervals. (Bottom image) Combined bathymetry map of the multibeam bathymetry data, single-beam bathymetry compilation around Puerto Rico, Lidar data near shore, and topography of Puerto Rico.

Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center's Ellyn Montgomery (right) on the helipad of the Canadian Coast Guard Vessel Louis St. Laurent returning from an ice reconnaissance flight as part of a joint study mapping the foot of the continental slope in the Arctic Ocean in 2008

The USGS Gas Hydrates Project integrates across USGS mission areas, programs, and regions. The stars indicate the locations of personnel involved in the Gas Hydrates Project. Within the US, much of the research focuses on the Gulf of America and Alaska, which represent marine and permafrost-associated settings for gas hydrates, respectively.

Static stress change models for known or hypothesized faults in the Hispaniola and Puerto Rico subduction segments due to (a) slip on a patch of the Puerto Rico subduction zone, and (b) slip on a patch of the Hispaniola subduction zone. An open arrow denotes slip direction and the patches are marked by dashed rectangles.

Grand Canyon sand was photographed with a hand-held point-and-shoot camera in a waterproof housing.

USGS research geologist Curt Storlazzi installs an instrument package on the seafloor of Maunalua Bay, Oʻahu. The platform, called a MiniPROBE, hosts six upward-looking acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCP), seven conductivity and temperature (CT) sensors, and eight self-logging optical backscatter sensors (SLOBS).

USGS staff collecting a sediment core on Ft. Desoto Beach, Florida using vibracoring equipment. This type of sediment coring uses the vibration of an electric motor to sink an aluminum core barrel into the ground. When the core barrel enters the ground the sediment in the ground fills up the barrel and the crew uses the tripod to pull the core out of the ground.

A pressurized, stable, hydrate-bearing sediment core can be fed through the IPTC body, shown here being used in Singapore to support the Indian National Gas Hydrates Program (NGHP1)

Kristen Hart releasing a satellite-tagged hawksbill sea turtle, August 2008, Dry Tortugas National Park.

USGS scientists from the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center (PCMSC) in Santa Cruz, California deploy an instrument called the poking eyeball. The system, developed by PCMSC, was designed to take repetitive microscopic images of the seabed from a tripod on the seafloor.