Gulf-Wide

Land and seafloor slopes are generally low along the coasts in the Mid-Atlantic and Gulf Coast states, making wetlands and estuaries vulnerable to sea level change, subsidence, and extreme events (e.g., hurricanes and tropical storms). Land-use change and land loss have been mapped extensively and with increasing frequency, but the link between land loss and the processes responsible for landscape...

State and Federal agencies are working together to assess the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to determine appropriate restoration actions to restore natural resources, ecological services, and recreational services injured or lost due to the incident.

This project uses amplicon sequencing, and functional microarrays to examine the microbiomes of several deep-sea coral species, with priority given to species that are also of interest to the population genetics group: Desmophyllum dianthus, Lophelia pertusa , Enallopsammia sp., and Acanthogorgia sp. The project also uses metagenomics to survey benthic habitats including coral mounds, cold seeps...

USGS is undertaking a 5-year study to assess groundwater availability for the aquifers proximal to the Gulf of Mexico from the Texas-Mexico border through the panhandle of Florida, known as the Coastal Lowlands Aquifer System (CLAS). This study is one of several within the Regional Groundwater Availability Studies of the USGS Water Availability and Use Science Program .

The USGS Southeast Regional Office has funded a cross-center collaboration between the Wetland and Aquatic Research Center and the Texas Water Science Center for the development of the Gulf of Mexico Water Dashboard. The objective of this effort is to expand the Texas Water Dashboard platform to include the coastal regions of the five Gulf states: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and...

Human alteration of waterways has impacted the minimum and maximum streamflows in more than 86% of monitored streams nationally and may be the primary cause for ecological impairment in river and stream ecosystems. Restoration of freshwater inflows can positively affect shellfish, fisheries, habitat, and water quality in streams, rivers, and estuaries. Increasingly, state and local decision-makers...

USGS works with partners to assess manatee distribution and habitat use throughout the Northern Gulf of Mexico.

Eighty-five percent of the coastal wetland loss in the contiguous United States occurs in the Gulf of Mexico. Documenting and understanding the occurrence of this wetland loss will provide for effective planning, mitigation, and restoration activities.

This study will examine the potential effects of climate-change-induced sea level rise, drought and water extraction by examining tree growth patterns across the Gulf Coast, specifically targeting long-term research plots available in the North American Baldcypress Swamp Network (NABCSN) and the Suwannee River.

More than half of contiguous U.S. coastal wetlands are located along the Gulf of Mexico coast. These highly-productive wetlands support many ecosystem goods and services and fish and wildlife habitat. Historically, coastal wetlands have adapted to sea-level changes via lateral and vertical movement on the landscape. As sea levels rise in the future, coastal wetlands will adapt and migrate landward...

To effectively manage an ecosystem, resource managers need a way to evaluate its health and ability to function. Metrics that indicate ecosystem condition - or indicators - can be used to help determine how well management strategies work.

Sudden Marsh Dieback - SMD - has been documented for the past two decades throughout coastal areas of the United States. With these large-scale diebacks comes the loss of ecosystem functions and services. USGS scientsts use field work and greenhouse studies to investigate the factors that control the resilience and resistance of coastal salt marshes to SMD.