Jonathan Warrick
My research focuses on the intersection of rivers and the sea. Topics include the movement of sediment within and from coastal watersheds, and how sediment can alter coastal landscapes and habitats. Recently these subjects have been addressed in my work on the Elwha River, Washington, where the largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed in 2014.
Biography
Education
Ph.D., 2002, University of California, Santa Barbara
M.Sc., 1995, University Wisconsin-Madison
B.Sc., 1993, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Experience
Research Geologist, GS-15, 2016-present, USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Santa Cruz, California
Research Geologist, GS-14, 2008-2016, USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Santa Cruz, California
Research Geologist, GS-13, 2004-2008, USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Santa Cruz, California
Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow, GS-12, 2002-2004, USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program, Menlo Park, California
Follow me on Google Scholar and ResearchGate
In The News
2017, Los Angeles Times article, "Highway 1 was buried under a massive landslide. Months later, engineers battle Mother Nature to fix it." about the USGS remote sensing work to characterize the Mud Creek landslide in Big Sur, California.
2016, The Department of Interior and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, International RiverPrize Finalist, for the Elwha River Restoration Project
2015, New York Times article, “When Dams Come Down, Salmon and Sand Can Prosper” about the coastal changes from new supplies sediment.
2014, National Geographic news article, “World’s Largest Dam Removal Unleashes U.S. River After Century of Electric Production” about final stages of dam removal on the Elwha River.
2013, Elwha: A River Reborn by AAAS Kavli Science Journalism award winners Lynda Mapes and Steve Ringman.
2012, Front-page Seattle Times article, “Dam gone, nature rebuilds Elwha River beach” about sediment transport from the Elwha River during dam removal. August 6, 2012.
2009, Science Daily article, “Sediment Yield From The Tectonically Active Semiarid Western Transverse Ranges Of California” about sources of sediment and sand for southern California beaches. 2006, Environmental Science & Technology news article, “California’s Shifting Sands” (vol. 40, no.1, pp. 6-7) about river sources of beach sand.
Science and Products
Climate impacts on Monterey Bay area beaches
For beach towns around Monterey Bay, preserving the beaches by mitigating coastal erosion is vital. Surveys conducted now and regularly in the future will help scientists understand the short- and long-term impacts of climate change, El Niño years, and sea-level rise on a populated and vulnerable coastline.
Coastal Climate Impacts
The impacts of climate change and sea-level rise around the Pacific and Arctic Oceans can vary tremendously. Thus far the vast majority of national and international impact assessments and models of coastal climate change have focused on low-relief coastlines that are not near seismically active zones. Furthermore, the degree to which extreme waves and wind will add further stress to coastal...
Remote Sensing Coastal Change
We use remote-sensing technologies—such as aerial photography, satellite imagery, structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry, and lidar (laser-based surveying)—to measure coastal change along U.S. shorelines.
The Mud Creek Landslide May 20 2017
On May 20, 2017, the steep slopes at Mud Creek on California’s Big Sur coast, about 140 miles south of San Francisco, suffered a catastrophic collapse. USGS scientists from the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center and the Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center continue to monitor this section of the coastline, in collaboration with the California Department of...
Using Video Imagery to Study Coastal Change: Sunset State Beach
Two video cameras overlook the coast at Sunset State Beach in Watsonville, California. Camera 1 looks northwest while Camera 2 looks north. The cameras are part of the Remote Sensing Coastal Change project.
USGS science supporting the Elwha River Restoration Project
The Elwha River Restoration Project...
... has reconnected the water, salmon, and sediment of a pristine river and coast of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Coordinated by the National Park Service, restoration of the Elwha River included the removal of two large dams that had blocked salmon and sediment passage for almost 100 years. The largest dam removal in U.S. history began in...
Using Video Imagery to Study Coastal Change: Santa Cruz Beaches
Two video cameras atop the Dream Inn hotel in Santa Cruz, California, overlook the coast in northern Monterey Bay. One camera looks eastward over Santa Cruz Main Beach and boardwalk, while the other looks southward over Cowells Beach.
California Sand Resource Assessment Project
The USGS is working in partnership with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the State of California Ocean Protection Council (OPC) to evaluate sand and gravel resources in Federal and State waters for potential use in future beach nourishment projects. Prior to the leasing and development of outer continental shelf (OCS) sand resources for use in beach restoration or coastal...
Mapping Land-Use, Hazard Vulnerability and Habitat Suitability Using Deep Neural Networks
Deep learning is a computer analysis technique inspired by the human brain’s ability to learn. It involves several layers of artificial neural networks to learn and subsequently recognize patterns in data, forming the basis of many state-of-the-art applications from self-driving cars to drug discovery and cancer detection. Deep neural networks are capable of learning many levels of abstraction...
Exploring the USGS Science Data Life Cycle in the Cloud
Executive Summary Traditionally in the USGS, data is processed and analyzed on local researcher computers, then moved to centralized, remote computers for preservation and publishing (ScienceBase, Pubs Warehouse). This approach requires each researcher to have the necessary hardware and software for processing and analysis, and also to bring all external data required for the workflow over the...
National Dam Removal Database: A living database for information on dying dams
The United States has over 2 million dams on rivers and streams (Graf, 1999), and more than 84,000 of the larger dams are documented in the congressionally mandated National Inventory of Dams (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2015). The average age of these National Inventory of Dams is 52 years; by the year 2030, over 80 percent will be at least 50 years old (American Society of Civil Engineers...
Dam removal: synthesis of ecological and physical responses
Dam decommissioning is rapidly emerging as an important river restoration strategy in the U.S., with several major removals recently completed or in progress. But few studies have evaluated the far-reaching consequences of these significant environmental perturbations, especially those resulting from removals of large (>10-15 m tall) structures during the last decade. In particular,...
Littoral sediment from rivers: Patterns, rates and processes of river mouth morphodynamics
Rivers provide important sediment inputs to many littoral cells, thereby replenishing sand and gravel of beaches around the world. However, there is limited information about the patterns and processes of littoral-grade sediment transfer from rivers into coastal systems. Here I address these information gaps by examining topographic and...
Warrick, Jonathan
Cliff Feature Delineation Tool and Baseline Builder version 1.0 user guide
Coastal cliffs constitute 80 percent of the world’s coastline, with seacliffs fronting a large proportion of the U.S. West Coast shoreline, particularly in California. Erosion of coastal cliffs can threaten infrastructure and human life, yet the spatial and temporal scope of cliff studies have been limited by cumbersome traditional methods that...
Seymour, Alexander C.; Hapke, Cheryl J.; Warrick, Jonathan
Community for data integration 2018 funded project report
The U.S. Geological Survey Community for Data Integration annually funds small projects focusing on data integration for interdisciplinary research, innovative data management, and demonstration of new technologies. This report provides a summary of the 10 projects funded in fiscal year 2018, outlining their goals, activities, and accomplishments.
Hsu, Leslie; Andrews, Caitlin M.; Bradford, John B.; Buscombe, Daniel D.; Chase, Katherine J.; Daniel, Wesley M.; Jones, Jeanne M.; Fuller, Pam; Mirus, Benjamin B.; Neilson, Matthew E.; Vraga, Hans W.; Walker, Jessica J.; Walworth, Dennis H.; Warrick, Jonathan; Weltzin, Jake F.; Wieferich, Daniel J.; Wood, Nathan J. Accurate bathymetric maps from underwater digital imagery without ground control
Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry can be used with digital underwater photographs to generate high-resolution bathymetry and orthomosaics with millimeter-to-centimeter scale resolution at relatively low cost. Although these products are useful for assessing species diversity and health, they have additional utility for quantifying benthic...
Hatcher, Gerry; Warrick, Jonathan; Ritchie, Andrew C.; Dailey, Evan; Zawada, David G.; Kranenburg, Christine; Yates, Kimberly K. Optical wave gauging using deep neural networks
We develop a remote wave gauging technique to estimate wave height and period from imagery of waves in the surf zone. In this proof-of-concept study, we apply the same framework to three datasets: the first, a set of close-range monochrome infrared (IR) images of individual nearshore waves at Duck, NC, USA; the second, a set of visible (i.e. RGB)...
Buscombe, Daniel; Carini, Roxanne J; Harrison, Shawn; Chickadel, C Chris; Warrick, Jonathan Commentary: Variability in shelf sedimentation in response to fluvial sediment supply and coastal erosion over the past 1,000 Years in Monterey Bay, CA, United States
A commentary on: Variability in Shelf Sedimentation in Response to Fluvial Sediment Supply and Coastal Erosion Over the Past 1,000 Years in Monterey Bay, CA, United States. by Carlin J., Addison J., Wagner A., Schwartz V., Hayward J., Severin V. (2019) Front. Earth Sci., 7:113. doi: 10.3389/feart.2019.00113
Warrick, Jonathan; East, Amy E.; Storlazzi, Curt D.; Conrad, James E. World’s largest dam removal reverses coastal erosion
Coastal erosion outpaces land generation along many of the world’s deltas and a significant percentage of shorelines, and human-caused alterations to coastal sediment budgets can be important drivers of this erosion. For sediment-starved and erosion-prone coasts, large-scale enhancement of sediment supply may be an important, but poorly understood...
Warrick, Jonathan; Stevens, Andrew W.; Miller, Ian M.; Harrison, Shawn R; Ritchie, Andrew C.; Gelfenbaum, Guy R. Integrating structure from motion, numerical modelling and field measurements to understand carbonate sediment transport in coral reef canopies
Reef canopies are complex and extremely variable across a range of spatial scales. This variability affects the velocity above as well as within the canopy, and directly impacts the transport of sediment along the bed as well as suspended in the water column. How a canopy affects the transport of sediment is important to understand and predict...
Pomeroy, Andrew; Storlazzi, Curt D.; Rosenberger, Kurt J.; Hatcher, Gerry; Warrick, Jonathan Characterizing the catastrophic 2017 Mud Creek Landslide, California, using repeat Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry
Along the rugged coast of Big Sur, California, the Mud Creek landslide failed catastrophically on May 20, 2017 and destroyed over 400 m of scenic California State Highway 1. We collected structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry data using airborne platforms that, when combined with existing airborne lidar data, revealed that the area exhibited...
Warrick, Jonathan; Ritchie, Andrew C.; Reid, Mark E.; Schmidt, Kevin; Logan, Joshua B. Morphodynamic evolution following sediment release from the world’s largest dam removal
Sediment pulses can cause widespread, complex changes to rivers and coastal regions. Quantifying landscape response to sediment-supply changes is a long-standing problem in geomorphology, but the unanticipated nature of most sediment pulses rarely allows for detailed measurement of associated landscape processes and evolution. The intentional...
Ritchie, Andrew C.; Warrick, Jonathan; East, Amy E.; Magirl, Christopher S.; Stevens, Andrew W.; Bountry, Jennifer A.; Randle, Timothy J.; Curran, Christopher A.; Hilldale, Robert C.; Duda, Jeffrey J.; Miller, Ian M.; Pess, George R.; Eidam, Emily; Foley, Melissa M.; McCoy, Randall; Ogston, Andrea S. Do we know how much fluvial sediment reaches the sea? Decreased river monitoring of U.S. coastal rivers
Given the present and future changing climate and human changes to land use and river control, river sediment fluxes to coastal systems are changing and will continue to change in the future. To delineate these changes and their effects, it is increasingly important to document the fluxes of river-borne sediment discharged to the sea....
Warrick, Jonathan; Milliman, John D. Rapid, remote assessment of Hurricane Matthew impacts using four-dimensional structure-from-motion photogrammetry
Timely assessment of coastal landforms and structures after storms is important for evaluating storm impacts, aiding emergency response and restoration, and initializing and assessing morphological models. Four-dimensional multiview photogrammetry, also known as structure from motion (4D SfM), provides a method for generating three-dimensional...
Sherwood, Christopher R.; Warrick, Jonathan; Hill, Andrew D.; Ritchie, Andrew C.; Andrews, Brian D.; Plant, Nathaniel G.
Cliff Feature Delineation Tool and Baseline Builder
The Cliff Feature Delineation Tool scans digital elevation models (DEM) to delineate features on seacliffs like the cliff top, midline, toe, and convexities/concavities on the cliff face, outputting linear features as polylines and point shapefiles.
Bringing USGS Science Expertise Together for Natural Hazards in Big Sur, CA
Recent landslide activity along California’s Pacific coast in the region known as Big Sur has provided graphic examples of the power and impacts of natural hazard events.
Coastal Change Hazards Team Releases New Software Tool for Delineating Coastal Cliff Features
SPCMSC Physical Scientist Alexander Seymour and co-authors Cheryl Hapke (University of South Florida College of Marine Science) and Jonathan Warrick (PCMSC) published a USGS Open-File Report and a software tool for delineating features on coastal cliffs.
USGS geologist discusses erosion at Fort Funston for ABC7 News segment on landslide fatality
On Monday, February 25, 2019, research geologist Jonathan Warrick of the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center spoke with ABC7 News about a February 22 landslide that injured one woman and buried another at San Francisco’s Fort Funston beach.
Moving Mountains: Elwha River Still Changing Five Years After World’s Largest Dam-Removal Project: More than 20 million tons of sediment flushed to the sea
Starting in 2011, the National Park Service removed two obsolete dams from the Elwha River in Olympic National Park, Washington. It was the world’s largest dam-removal project. Over the next five years, water carrying newly freed rocks, sand, silt and old tree trunks reshaped more than 13 miles of river and built a larger delta into the Pacific Ocean.
Time-lapse view of California Highway 1 reconstruction after 2017 landslide
USGS scientists produced an animated GIF in coordination with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) re-opening of State Highway 1 through Big Sur on July 18, 2018.
USGS partnership with Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe featured in new fact sheet on Elwha River dam removals
The USGS has published a new Fact Sheet, “Science Partnership between U.S. Geological Survey and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe: Understanding the Elwha River Dam Removal Project.”
LA Times story about Big Sur landslide features quotes, imagery from USGS
USGS geologists Jon Warrick and Kevin Schmidt are quoted in a November 9, 2017 Los Angeles Times story.
Video shot from drones yields details about changing landslide on California’s Big Sur coast
On October 12, 2017, USGS unmanned aerial systems collected video footage of the Mud Creek landslide, which buried California State Highway 1 under a third-of-a-mile-wide mass of rock and dirt on May 20, 2017.
USGS Monitors Huge Landslides on California's Big Sur Coast, Shares Information with California Department of Transportation
On May 20, 2017, more than 2 million cubic meters of rock and dirt—enough to fill a line of dump trucks nearly a thousand miles long—collapsed down the steep slopes at Mud Creek on California’s Big Sur coast, about 140 miles south of San Francisco. A pile of rubble almost a third of a mile wide buried California State Highway 1 over 65 feet deep and added about 13 acres of new land to the...
USGS maps underwater part of Big Sur landslide at Mud Creek
Scientists from the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center mapped the offshore extent of the Mud Creek landslide on California’s Big Sur coast on July 11, 2017.
Huge landslide on California’s Big Sur coast continues to change
The Mud Creek landslide on California’s Big Sur coast keeps eroding.
New Land Created by Slide on Big Sur Coast is Eroding
USGS analysis of air photos collected June 13 shows that new land created by a May 20 landslide on California’s Big Sur coast is eroding.