Recent Coastal and Marine Fieldwork - August-September 2020
USGS Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program (CMHRP) scientists were able to safely venture out to collect beach elevations, geochemistry samples for wildfire contamination, water, soil, and meteorological data, offshore bathymetric and seismic data, ocean, lake, and bay sediment samples, and more, from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California, to Massachusetts, New York, and Florida.
Bellingham Bay, Washington: Sampling and elevation surveys to describe invertebrate communities in eelgrass beds of Bellingham Bay, and to relate to substrate properties. July 2019-August 2020
Chuckwalla Valley, Riverside County, California: Evaluating sediment properties and accumulation rates in area of proposed solar array development, through grain size measurements, age-dating of subsurface sediment, and from data derived from installed weather station. November 2019-September 2020
Herring River Estuary, Cape Cod, Massachusetts: Monitoring of surface water and pore-water depth, salinity, and temperature, soil temperature and meteorological data in Herring River estuary to examine environmental geochemistry and health of the estuary. June-October
Martin and Brevard Counties, Florida: Collecting beach elevation profiles and sea turtle nesting locations to assess sea turtle nesting response on different template designs for nourished beaches and how these differ from a "natural beach". June-August
Sand Key, Clearwater, Florida: Collecting beach elevation transects to support our Sand Key camera operation. August
Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California: Collecting base GPS and beach elevation data and Structure-from-Motion digital photos, to monitor changes in beach sand volume and distribution. August , September
Lakes in the Anchorage, Alaska region: Collecting subbottom profiles and short gravity cores in lakes for the 2018 Anchorage earthquake response studies in lacustrine settings (supplemental project). August
Prince William Sound, Alaska: Collecting seismic data and core samples to investigate earthquake-induced submarine landslide deposits following the 2018 M7.1 Anchorage earthquake. August-September
Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, Massachusetts: Collecting seabed sediment samples for geological mapping project. August-September
Head of the Meadow Beach, Cape Cod National Seashore, Truro, Massachusetts: Installing a meteorological station to help with coastal change forecasts. September
Fire Island National Seashore, New York: Collecting ground-penetrating radar and sediment core data to reconstruct geologic history of Fire Island. September-November
Madeira Beach, Florida: Collecting GPS beach elevation data in support of long-term monitoring at Madeira Beach and the total water level (TWL) model. September 8 and September 21
Northern San Francisco Bay near Benicia, California: Collecting bathymetric survey at two sites in northern San Francisco Bay. September
Southern Cascadia subduction zone, offshore southern Oregon/northern California: Collecting core samples for analysis, to constrain uncertainties in offshore records of megathrust earthquake recurrence and to characterize deformation patterns along the deformation front. September
Santa Cruz county and San Mateo county coastal watersheds, California: CZU Lightning Complex wildfire geochemistry: Collecting sediment samples for analysis, to characterize sediment geochemical, carbon, and contaminant changes associated with wildfire and potential loading to coastal systems. September 2020-March 2021
Grizzly Bay, San Pablo Bay, California: Collecting sediment samples for grain-size and bulk density analysis. September
Whiskeytown reservoir, northern California: Collecting bathymetric data and sediment samples to determine sediment thickness of Whiskeytown reservoir to assess post-fire runoff after Carr Fire, a major disaster of summer 2018. September
Santa Barbara littoral cell between Goleta and Point Mugu, California: Collecting nearshore bathymetry and beach topography to monitor changes in sand distribution and movement in nearshore portions of the littoral cell. September
Lake Tahoe, Tahoe City, California: Field testing of modifications/updates to the SQUID-5 underwater structure-from-motion mapping vehicle, used to measure lake bed elevation and orthoimagery. September
Puget Sound, Washington: Servicing instruments and downloading the water-level data, to build a time series of water-surface elevation data from the instrument mooring. September
Garrison Lake and Floras Lake, Oregon: Collecting geophysical profile of lake bottom stratigraphy and marsh core sediment data to reconstruct a time-series of past flooding events and their potential origin/cause. September
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