Images

USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz, California installed these two video cameras, pointed at the shoreline. The cameras collected imagery every half hour for 10 minutes, during daylight hours. The images are stored in the cloud and are used to study coastal variations through time, like wave, shoreline, and sandbar dynamics.

 R/V Petrel surveying off Beach Haven, NJ during USGS FA 2018-001-FA

Reefs provide protection from waves and wave-driven flooding. A snapshot from the simulation of wave-driven flooding and island overwash for an annual storm at the Republic of the Marshall Islands is shown.

Scientists at the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center use Hydro-MEM, a two-dimensional coastal wetland model that integrates an Advanced Circulation hydrodynamic model with a Marsh Equilibrium Model to project marsh response to sea-level rise.

Screenshot of Our Coast, Our Future (OCOF) interactive map view of Stinson Beach, California, showing extent of flooding predicted if subjected to a sea-level rise of 100 centimeters (about 40 inches) and elevated water levels caused by a 100-year storm.

In an effort spanning the Natural Hazards and Ecosystems Mission Areas, pilots from the Saint Petersburg and Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Centers collect imagery data using Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) while personnel from the Wetlands and Aquatic Research Center (WARC) conduct ground-based site surveys of Pelican Island, Alabama.

For more than 15 years, the USGS has actively studied natural and human changes to the shoreline, beaches, and dunes at Fire Island.

USGS scientists retrieve and process samples from an ecological processing monitoring station. Each station includes a caged native mussel (shown attached to the buoy rope) and a sampler for measuring invertebrate consumers

 Coastal storms can severely alter the topography and ecosystems along heavily populated coastal regions. Seamless integrated elevation data for both land and submerged areas in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey, are fundamental to coastal planning of the northeastern U.S. Atlantic coast.

Cave passage and diver (Bil Philips, cave explorer) in Ox Bel Ha Cave System of the northeastern Yucatan Peninsula.

Storm and sea level rise scenario models, like the one shown here, can be used to explore the future. This model shows what Dauphin Island may look like 10 years from now if storms become stronger and more frequent (Passeri and others, 2018).

Geologic sections (C-C', D-D', and E-E') illustrating the general distributions and thicknesses of seismic stratigraphic units and major unconformities in the Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket study areas.

Coastal wetland ecosystems in Jamaica Bay, New York, provide important ecosystem services along the highly urbanized Atlantic coast.

A brain coral infected with Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in April 2018.

Shaded-relief map of central California showing location of the Big Sur area (white dashed line). Red line shows the San Gregorio-Hosgri fault (SGHF) and the Big Sur Bend between Point Sur (PS) and Piedras Blancas (PB). Black lines show other faults.

Perspective view of part of the Big Sur Bend in the San Gregorio-Hosgri fault. The steep slope beside the fault results from uplift along the fault, which is part of the strike-slip fault system that forms the boundary in California between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates.

Illustration shows the cross-section of a barrier island progressing from ocean (on the right) to marsh and then lagoon (on the left). 

Contractor Babak Tehranirad works on an operational model for forecasting flooding around San Francisco Bay.

Left to right: USGS scientist Josh Logan, USGS contractor Babak Tehranirad, and USGS contractor Rae Taylor-Burns (University of California-Santa Cruz graduate student) collect beach elevation data near Moss Landing, California, with precision GPS units carried in their backpacks.

Babak Tehranirad holds a lobster that he caught while on vacation in March 2017.

RV Petrel towing subbottom profiler (yellow raft) parallel to the beach to measure the thickness of sand offshore.