Capabilities

Understanding the processes responsible for coastal change is important for managing both our natural and economic coastal resources. Storms are one of the primary driving forces causing coastal change from a coupling of wave- and wind-driven flows. To better understand storm impacts and their effects on our coastlines, there is an international need to better predict storm paths and intensities...

Natural processes such as waves, tides, and weather, continually change coastal landscapes. The integrity of coastal homes, businesses, and infrastructure can be threatened by hazards associated with event-driven changes, such as extreme storms and their impacts on beach and dune erosion, or longer-term, cumulative changes associated with coastal and marine processes, such as sea-level rise...

Below is the list of our fieldwork specialists at PCMSC's Marine Facility, or MarFac.

From May of 2018 through November of 2019, USGS scientists collected imagery from video cameras overlooking the coast along a beach on Whidbey Island, Island County at the northern boundary of Puget Sound in western Washington.

CoSMoS v3.1 for central California shows projections for future climate scenarios (sea-level rise and storms)

Coastal change forecasts and pre- and post-storm photos documenting coastal change for landfalling storms. Currently responding to Hurricane Dorian.

USGS scientists installed video cameras atop a building and oceanographic instruments off San Juan, Puerto Rico, to better understand how waves move across coral reefs and cause flooding on tropical shorelines.

To responsibly manage our coastal resources requires an understanding of the processes responsible for coastal change. The CMHRP developed a Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere–Wave–Sediment Transport (COAWST) modeling system that allows the user to evaluate how different processes such as winds and waves, combined with sediment transport, interact with coastlines to modify them. Users can change model...

In the Field; Land, Sea, and Air Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center scientists and staff study coastal and ocean resources and processes from the land, sea, and air, to shorelines and estuaries to the continental shelf, deep sea, lake floor, river bottoms and shallow subsurfaces environments. We have implemented new safety and fieldwork processes to maintain social distancing to ensure...

Join the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center team! The Center is part of the USGS Coastal/Marine Hazards and Resources Program, which is the primary federal marine geology and physical science research program. The Center's staff of 100 provides scientific information that contributes to decisions by other federal agencies, state and local entities, private organizations, industry, and...

For a short study period, two video cameras overlooked the coast from atop the coastal bluff of Barter Island in northern Alaska. The purpose was to observe and quantify coastal processes such as wave run-up, development of rip channels, bluff erosion, and movement of sandbars and ice floes.

Coastal and Estuarine Dynamics Project exists to support ocean, coastal and estuarine research. The staff have a broad set of skills; from instrument design and development to all forms of work at sea to software development and data management. The team has successfully deployed and recovered more than 1000 data collection platforms for research in the last 30 years.