Images

Map showing the amount of sea-level rise that will double the chances of today’s “50-year floods,” which have a 2 percent chance of happening in any year. Warmer colors indicate areas at greater risk.

Elizabeth Pendleton describes USGS work to map the Massachusetts seafloor to State Senator Viriato “Vinny” deMacedo.

Orthomosaic images of Matanzas, Florida, from (a) before and (b) after Hurricane Matthew, and (c) a digital elevation model (DEM) showing the associated topographic change. Note, these results were produced by applying Structure-from-Motion (SfM) to NOAA oblique photographs, but similar results can be obtained using UAS aerial imagery.

Exposed bedrock on the beach during very low (negative) tide at Isla Vista, California

 USGS scientists built a model that reproduces the waves, currents (shown in meters per second [m/s]), and sand movement at Fire Island during Hurricane Sandy’s passage (Warner and others, 2017).

Perspective views of multibeam bathymetry data acquired by the USGS aboard the R/V Medeia. Shallower depths in red. Arrows point to the distinct line in the seafloor associated with the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather fault.

A look into the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center’s Marine Minerals Laboratory Suite.

Scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of calcareous trochospiral estuarine foraminifera Ammonia tepida collected from Grand Bay estuary

Scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of agglutinated marsh foraminifera Entzia macrescens.

Michael Casso, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center physical scientist,  seeks volunteers from Children’s School of Science students to have their breath measured for carbon dioxide and methane, greenhouse gases USGS scientists measure in the oceans

Video camera atop a hotel in Madeira Beach, Florida.

Ice-like gas hydrates under capping rock encrusted with mussels on the sea floor of the northern Gulf of America.

USGS pilot Sandy Brosnahan and Senate Pro Tempore Marc Pacheco discuss the use of Umanned Aerial Systems (UASs, also known as drones) to collect data in coastal environments.

(Top) Methane plumes at the Norfolk Canyon seeps (~1600 meters or 5250 feet) were detected using the EK60 sonar. The water column plumes are shown above the sub-seafloor structure as imaged by high-resolution multichannel seismic data acquired by the USGS and processed by J. Kluesner.

Map of the general expedition area on the northern U.S. Atlantic Margin between Baltimore Canyon and Cape Hatteras

 Map of distribution of fine- and coarse-grained sand, Stellwagen Bank.  Blue and purple = boulder ridges.  Redlines = leading edges of sand sheets

Methane bubbles emerging from the seafloor at a seep site colonized by chemosynthetic mussels at ~1000 m water depth on the Virginia margin. Photograph taken by the Global Explorer operated by Oceaneering Inc.

USGS ocean engineers Peter Dal Ferro and Gerry Hatcher, from the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz, California, deploying a multicorer to sample the seafloor near an Atlantic margin methane seep site.

It's a bird? It's a plane? It's a drone! USGS drone pilot Emily Sturdivant (seated) demonstrates flying an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), much to the delight of the onlookers. 

Gerry Hatcher (left) and Shawn Harrison work on their video-camera station atop a hotel in Santa Cruz, California.

Views of Madeira Beach, Florida, produced from a 17-minute video shot on June 20, 2017. Left: Snapshot, or first frame of video. Right: Time-averaged image, sometimes called a “timex,” created by averaging the intensity of light recorded at each spot, or “pixel,” during the 17-minute video.