Publications

Airborne lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) is an active remote sensing technique used to collect accurate elevation data over large areas. Lidar provides an extremely high level of regional topographic detail, which makes this technology an essential component of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) science strategy. The USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program (CMGP) has collaborated with the...

Due in large part to the difficulty of obtaining measurements in the Arctic, little is known about the wave climate along the coast of Arctic Alaska. In this study, numerical model simulations encompassing 40 years of wave hind-casts were used to assess mean and extreme wave conditions. Results indicate that the wave climate was strongly modulated by large-scale atmospheric circulation...

This Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) publication was prepared by an agency of the United States Government. Although these data have been processed successfully on a computer system at the U.S. Geological Survey, no warranty expressed or implied is made regarding the display or utility of the data on any other system, nor shall the act of distribution imply any such warranty. The U.S...

This DVD contains lidar-derived first-surface (FS) and bare-earth (BE) topography GIS datasets of a portion of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta region and Three Mile Creek in Alabama. These datasets were acquired on March 6, 2010.

Tropical small mountainous rivers deliver a poorly quantified, but potentially significant, amount of carbon to the world’s oceans. However, few historical records of land–ocean carbon transfer exist for any region on Earth. Corals have the potential to provide such records, because they draw on dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) for calcification. In temperate systems, the stable- (δ13C)...

Ages of some key stratigraphic sequences in central Indian Proterozoic basins are based predominantly on lithostratigraphic relationships that have been constrained by only a few radioisotopic dates. To help improve age constraints, single grains of glauconitic minerals taken from sandstone and limestone in two Proterozoic sequences in the Pranhita-Godavari Valley and the Chattisgarh...

Radon and radium isotopes are routinely used to quantify exchange rates between different hydrologic reservoirs. Since their recognition as oceanic tracers in the 1960s, both radon and radium have been used to examine processes such as air-sea exchange, deep oceanic mixing, benthic inputs, and many others. Recently, the application of radon-222 and the radium-quartet (223,224,226,228Ra)...

Inner-shelf circulation is governed by the interaction between tides, baroclinic forcing, winds, waves, and frictional losses; the mean circulation ultimately governs exchange between the coast and ocean. In some cases, oscillatory tidal currents interact with bathymetric features to generate a tidally rectified flow. Recent observational and modeling efforts in an overlapping domain...

This DVD contains lidar-derived first-surface (FS) and bare-earth (BE) topography GIS datasets of a portion of the northern Outer Banks beachface in North Carolina. These datasets were acquired post-Nor'Ida on November 27 and 29, 2009.

Temporally and spatially repeated patterns of wetland erosion, deformation, and deposition are observed on remotely sensed images and in the field after hurricanes cross the coast of Louisiana. The diagnostic morphological wetland features are products of the coupling of high-velocity wind and storm-surge water and their interaction with the underlying, variably resistant, wetland...

Microbes (bacteria, fungi, algae, and viruses) are the most successful types of life on Earth because of their ability to adapt to new environments, reproduce quickly, and disperse globally. Dispersal occurs through a number of vectors, such as migrating animals or the hydrological cycle, but transport by wind may be the most common way microbes spread. General awareness of airborne...

As a low-lying peninsula surrounded by water, Florida faces tough decisions about long-range planning and development strategies to address impacts of climate change. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated there is strong evidence that global average sea level will rise by ? to 2 feet in the next century due to continued thermal expansion and melting of ice...