Images

California's Highway 1 snakes its way along the steep terrain of the Big Sur coast. The bridge over Villa Creek can be seen in the left of the photo, as well as a retaining wall built under the freeway towards the center. These are just a few of the engineering feats by Caltrans to keep the roadway intact.

A section of Highway 1 along the California coast in Big Sur with more examples of the numerous debris flows and mudslides that occur following a heavy rain. This section is just south of the Rat Creek debris flow that completely washed out a large chunk of the highway.

A two-day rainstorm from January 26-28, 2021 caused numerous mudslides, debris flows, and other issues along California's coastal Highway 1 through Big Sur. This section is just north of Kirk Creek, at a drainage where mud was washed across the roadway. Plumes of the muddy runoff are clearly visible in the ocean.

A two-day rainstorm from January 26-28, 2021 caused numerous mudslides, debris flows, and other issues along California's coastal Highway 1 through Big Sur. This section is just north of Kirk Creek, at a drainage where mud was washed across the roadway. Plumes of the muddy runoff are clearly visible in the ocean.

A two-day rainstorm from January 26-28, 2021 caused numerous mudslides, debris flows, and other issues along California's coastal Highway 1 through Big Sur. This is Big Creek Bridge, and Big Creek is still murky. Plumes of the muddy runoff are clearly visible in the ocean.

The atmospheric river, a narrow, powerful track of water vapor that can deliver tremendous volumes of rain, hit the central California coast and stalled there between January 26 and 28, 2021 — with catastrophic consequences.

On May 20, 2017, this section of the Big Sur coastline experienced a huge landslide that wiped out scenic coastal Highway 1. By July 2018 the roadway was reopened.

Lab Manager, Adrian Mann, analyzes pore water samples on an Ion Chromatograph.

As part of the Remote Sensing of Coastal Change and Florence Supplemental projects we have been developing novel workflows for repeat-mapping of ­­­coastal environments at order decimeter resolution over up to hundreds of kilometers in a single day, using Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry or SfM, from crewed aerial platforms.

Perspective view of large SfM point cloud of region of Fort Funston, CA., with automated data cleaning (masking). This cleaned data has 50% fewer points.

A glass micromodel (upper left) allows fluid flow through gaps between solid cylinders (gap size of 100 micrometers is shown in the upper-right image). Injecting fine-grained materials allows us to characterize the conditions in which clogs occur, as they have done in the upper- and lower-right pictures.

Hurricane Sandy (2012) modeling: Modeling can reveal the contributions from underlying processes individually. These images show contribution from offshore surge (change in water level) and offshore waves to maximum water levels (in meters) within a bay during a coastal storm.

The USGS Gas Hydrates Project develops and tests new tools to address the critical knowledge gaps identified as scientists analyze hydrate-bearing pressure cores recovered during field programs.

The USGS Gas Hydrates Project manages the standalone Hydrate Pressure Core Analysis Laboratory (HyPrCAL) at the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center (WHCMSC) to study hydrate-bearing sediments in support of energy resources a

Remote-Sensing Coastal Change project field collections at the Head of the Meadow Bay in Massachusetts.

USGS samples water within wetlands to understand which environmental drivers impact carbon cycle and sediment accretion. Here USGS staff (Jennifer O'Keefe Suttles) pumps water from at Phragmites wetland, Mashpee, MA, to analyze at the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center Environmental Geochemistry lab.

WHOI/MIT PhD. Student, Sheron Luk, analyses sediment carbon on an Elemental Analyzer at Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center.

Diagram of the SQUID-5 towed surface vehicle and the waterproof camera housings with labeled components. The camera mounting mechanism aligns the camera axially with the dome and allows the camera to be adjusted fore and aft to accommodate various lens types and enable alignment with the glass port radius of curvature for minimal distortion.

Perspective view of large SfM point cloud of region of Fort Funston, CA., without automated data cleaning (masking).

The U.S. Geological Survey is conducting research to guide the recovery of the threatened Elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata, in Dry Tortugas National Park and throughout the western Atlantic.

Ocean Beach in San Francisco looking north