Images

Satellite images of barrier island near Moses Point Fishing Village, Norton Sound, Alaska, taken in 1986 and 2023.

Potential coastal change impacts are predicted during a direct landfall of Hurricane Beryl on the Texas coast at 4:00 am, Sunday, July 7, 2024.

USGS Marine Operations Manager Chuck Worley conducting fieldwork to study the geologic framework of Nantucket Sound.

The USGS is assessing the physical condition of coastal wetlands and their response to external forces, using field observations and remote-sensing data. The U.S.

Distinguished Service Award for Research Geologist Curt Storlazzi, presented on May 8, 2024.

Distinguished Service Award for USGS Research Geophysicist Carolyn Ruppel, presented on May 8, 2024.

Honorees pose with their awards at the 77th DOI Honor Awards Convocation on May 8, 2024.

Overview map of the Mississippi River delta showing subaerial birdfoot morphology formed by distributaries.

The United States has ECS in seven offshore areas: the Arctic, Atlantic (east coast), Bering Sea, Pacific (west coast), Mariana Islands, and two areas in the Gulf of America.  The U.S. ECS area is approximately one million square kilometers – an area about twice the size of California.

Sabrina Levinson, a USGS intern on the Coastal Sediment Availability and Flux Project (St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center), pilots a survey waverunner to the shallows of Wallops Island, Virginia.

From June through December, WHCMSC scientists are collecting shoreline and volumetric data at a beach in Sandwich, Massachusetts following a 2023 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers beach nourishment. The data will be useful for various purposes. Chris Sherwood is interested in comparing how the different measuring techniques work on different types of vegetation.

Location Map showing the Sur Pockmark Field outlined in green, individual pockmarks are shown as small red dots. This study focuses on the largest section of the pockmark field, from the Lucia Chica Channel down to the San Simeon Channel. AUV surveys are outlined in white and the offshore wind commercial leases are outlined in gray.

A diagram illustrating how the patterns of erosion and deposition associated with three sediment gravity flows could produce the stacked pockmarks and lateral migration observed in AUV-collected Chirp profiles. Long, uneventful episodes of hemipelagic drape (a, d, g, j) are intermittently interrupted by sediment gravity flows that either: 1b.

Diagram showing the sequence of land subsidence during an earthquake, followed with sand deposited by a tsunami.

Map showing location of Salmon River estuary, Oregon. Yellow dots represent estuaries, lagoons, and lakes with evidence of the 1700 tsunami.

View of Salmon River estuary, Oregon, from above. Sediment cores were collected from marshland toward the upper left of the image.

Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina shown in the pop-out of the U.S. Coastal Wetlands Synthesis Applications geonarrative.   

Sediment core with tidal silt, tsunami sand, and marsh peat collected from the Salmon River estuary, Oregon.

Animated GIF of Cascadia 1700 tsunami simulation at Salmon River, Oregon. Colored dots are locations where sediment cores were collected.

Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina shown in the pop-out of the U.S. Coastal Wetlands Synthesis Applications geonarrative. 

Researchers Brian Atwater and Wendy Grant Walter conducting prior paleotsunami research at Salmon River estuary, Oregon.