Images

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.

Glacier Bay, Alaska, dive team.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

This USGS vessel acquires single-beam bathymetry in shallow nearshore environments. We acquire repeat bathymetry surveys over multiple years and compute changes in bathymetry, thus allowing us to identify hotspots of erosion and deposition on short timescales.

Pamela Swarzenski from the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center sampling gas released by gas hydrate breakdown during a quantitative degassing aboard the drilling vessel Chikyu during the Indian Government’s National Gas Hydrates Program (NGHP-02) drilling expedition offshore from eastern India.

Minipod style tripod for near bottom current and wave measurements ready for deployment.

A GIS compilation of Updated Vector Shorelines and Associated Shoreline Change Data for the Gulf of America Coast

Vector Shorelines and Associated Shoreline Change Data for the Southeast Atlantic Coast