Images

Photograph showing the impact of a large wave at the south shore of Laysan Island, with endangered Laysan teal in the foreground.

Location: Laysan Islands (Northwestern Hawaiian Islands).

Two researchers deploying a fishing trawl into Lake Superior while aboard the USGS GLSC's R/V Kiyi

Photograph of shallow-water coral bleaching at Sombrero de Pelo reef in Pacific Panama during the 2015-2016 El Nino event. Because of the influence of internal waves, corals growing at deeper locations at this site did not bleach.

Pacific Ocean temperature differences during this winter’s record-setting El Niño. Dark red areas are much warmer than average.

Preliminary map products derived from the UAS imagery collected near Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod National Seashore on 1 March 2016. Left: shaded relief color contoured digital elevation map on a 0.1-meter grid. Right: orthophotomosaic (0.05-meter resolution) overlaid on the shaded relief map.

Glacier Bay, Alaska, dive team.

Sea surface temperature differences on March 1, 2016. Dark red indicates much warmer water.

Kim Yates (left) and Nate Smiley of the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center measure acidity, nutrient levels, and other characteristics of water sampled near the coral reef off Kahekili Beach Park, Maui, Hawai‘i, in March 2016.

A ship will tow this green cable, which contains underwater microphones that record sound reflected off layers beneath the seafloor. USGS scientists will use the data to pinpoint the location of faults.

USGS geologist Jamie Conrad uses a map of the seafloor off Southern California to plan high-resolution mapping southwest of Santa Catalina Island. Small inset shows seafloor data collected by the ship that reveals hills, gullies, and basins.

Large waves breaking on cliffs in western Santa Cruz, California, February 13, 2016.

The USGS Coastal and Estuarine Dynamics Group will be deploying a Nanopod at Pea Island DUNEX experiment site to collect oceanographic information.

USGS scientists survey a beach near San Francisco to assist with a comparison of data derived from aerial photos and lidar.

The coastal bluff along East Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, California are especially vulnerable to rising sea level during big storms. Sometimes even the rip-rap, put in place to protect roadways and homes, cannot protect the bluffs from erosion.

Waves flood across a coastal road near Santa Cruz, California.

View of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk amusement park in Santa Cruz, California. Photo was taken from the bluff on East Cliff Drive, east of the San Lorenzo River mouth. Sand on the beach gets eroded, redistributed, and deposited due to the dynamic conditions brought about by storms and changing river flow.

On remote Barter Island, Alaska, Bruce Richmond (right) and Cordell Johnson drill into 500-foot-thick permafrost using a handheld drill with a 2-inch drill bit—a challenging task! It can take 3 hours to drill nearly 20 feet down.

Picture shows United States Geological Survey scientist Beth Middleton and a lake in China. 

USGS scientist Lisa Robbins next to the research vessel (R/V) Atlantis, which is owned by the U.S. Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Cliff erosion is a common storm-induced hazard along the West Coast. Two condemned apartment buildings along Esplanade Avenue in Pacifica, California are shown here before their demolition in 2016 and 2017.

Map showing the tracklines and grab sample sites of the 2014 and 2015 geophysical surveys offshore of the Delmarva Peninsula.