Images

Sandy Brosnahan transporting a weather buoy into the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center’s operational facility in preparation for deployment. This buoy was one of 6 deployed to measure wind speed, direction, pressure, and temperature off the coast of Fire Island, NY.

Peter Swarzenski doing fieldwork on Alaska’s Barter Island, summer 2015 

 Scanning electron microscope image of gas hydrate crystals in a sediment sample. The scale is 50 micrometers (µm) or approximately 0.002 inches

Storm induced erosion of marsh shorelines can provide significant quantities of sediment to the bay altering the deposition patterns.

Measuring seagrass biomass in Chincoteague Bay, Maryland to constrain numerical models.

Flood tidal shoal at Barnegat Inlet, New Jersey (courtesy USGS EROS NAIP orthophotography)

Box-cores provide a relatively undistributed look into the recent past to help better understand the processes contributing to sediment deposition and erosion.

Flood maps from Our Coast, Our Future showing Stinson Beach today (slide 1); with a 50-centimeter sea-level rise (slide 2); and when an annual storm strikes in addition to 50-centimeter sea-level rise (slide 3). Green patches are low-lying areas prone to flooding.

Near vertical (top, middle) and low angle oblique (bottom) aerial photographs of Rodanthe, North Carolina. View looking west along the North Carolina shore. High waves and storm surge from Hurricane Joaquin eroded the beach, exposing the pilings of the homes to wave attack (green and orange arrows).

Near vertical (top, middle) and low angle oblique (bottom) aerial photographs of Salvo, North Carolina. View looking west along the North Carolina shore. Waves and surge from Hurricane Joaquin eroded the beach, causing significant shoreline retreat and a narrower beach, leaving deposits of darker sand at the base of the dune (green arrow).

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. Photo credit: Dann Blackwood, USGS.

Conceptual diagram showing the structure of the Bayesian network used to assess potential sea-level rise impacts on the coastal landscape.

Problem statement, objectives, and alternative actions defined by Department of Interior  collaborators using structured decision making framework

Illustration of the NIMBBLE (New instrument for making bottom boundary layer evaluations). The NIMBBLE is a low-profile platform with two acoustic Doppler velocimeters and an upward-looking acoustic Doppler profilers.

USGS staff and the ship's crew of the R/V Sharp prepare to deploy a deep-water multibeam echosounder during a mapping program in the mid-Atlantic in 2015.

Science crew aboard R/V Marcus G. Langseth. Ray Sliter (Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center) and Deb Hutchison (Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center) shown at far left.

Engineering technician Tim Elfers of the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center navigates a personal watercraft (PWC) through waves offshore of central California. The PWC is equipped with sonar and GPS in order to map the nearshore seafloor.

Personal watercraft were utilized to collect bathymetry in the surf zone and shore face (top left), setup on the beach (top right), instrument configuration (bottom left) and Pelican case hardware configuration (bottom right).

Photo showing the complex geomorphology of the marsh landscape of the Grand Bay National Wildlife Refuge/Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in coastal Alabama and Mississippi. (1) Geology—a tidal creek that at lower sea level than present served as a distributary channel of a river-delta system. (2) Hydrodynamics—wave erosion of the marsh edge.

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.

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