Unified Interior Regions
Florida
World class scientists working in Southeast Region Science Centers help our partners understand and manage complex issues including competition for limited water resources, coastal hazards, mineral and energy resource extraction, degraded ecosystems, vector-borne diseases, rapidly changing land use, and response to climate change.
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Sea Level Rise and Climate: Impacts on the Greater Everglades Ecosystem and Restoration
The Greater Everglades Ecosystem covers much of south Florida, and the highest areas are only a few meters above sea level. Predictions of sea level rise and changes in storm intensity for the 21st century are particularly concerning to the urban population of Miami and the east coast, but also represent a challenge to Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park resource...
Coral Reef Ecosystem Studies (CREST)
The specific objectives of this project are to identify and describe the processes that are important in determining rates of coral-reef construction. How quickly the skeletons of calcifying organisms accumulate to form massive barrier-reef structure is determined by processes of both construction (how fast organisms grow and reproduce) and destruction (how fast reefs break down by mechanical...
Black-band disease in the Florida Keys
Photos of corals affected by black-band disease in the Florida Keys.
Joint Ecosystem Modeling: Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow Helper
The Sparrow Helper tool allows for the evaluation of water management scenarios by generating, plotting, and mapping hydrologic metrics across a range of time scales to predict impacts of proposed water depth changes to sparrow subpopulations.
Joint Ecosystem Modeling: Wader Distribution & Evaluation Modeling (WADEM)
WADEM (Wader Distribution Evaluation Modeling) is a JEM model that estimates species-specific habitat suitability across the landscape for Great Egret (Ardea alba), White Ibis (Eudocimus albus), and Wood Stork (Mycteria americana).
Environmental and Public Health Microbiology Laboratory
The microbiologists at the Environmental and Public Health Microbiology Laboratory (EPHML) develop analytical methods for the identification and quantitation of pathogenic microorganisms that can impact the health of humans and other organisms. This laboratory also develops methods for accessing aquatic, terrestrial and atmospheric drivers of toxins and disease outbreaks.
Wetlands in the Quaternary Project
Wetlands accumulate organic-rich sediment or peat stratigraphically, making them great archives of past environmental change. Wetlands also act as hydrologic buffers on the landscape and are important to global biogeochemical cycling. This project uses wetland archives from a range of environments to better understand how vegetation, hydrology, and hydroclimate has changed on decadal to multi-...
Gulf Coast Petroleum Systems Project - Assessments
This site highlights the assessments of the Gulf Coast Petroleum Systems Project. Scientifically robust assessments of undiscovered, technically recoverable hydrocarbon resources are published in a variety of USGS publications. This project also conducts research on the processes that impact the formation, accumulation, occurrence and alteration of hydrocarbon energy resources. The Gulf...
Integrating Science and Management for Optimal Prevention and Control of Invasive Nymphoides in Florida
Two invasive species of floating hearts, Nymphoides cristata and N. indica, are actively managed in Florida. A rare native species, N. humboldtiana, has been found in Florida and verified by molecular methods; this species is nearly indistinguishable from N. indica.
Hurricane Matthew: Flood Resources and Tools
During and after Hurricane Matthew, the USGS made flood-flow measurements, maintained streamgages, deployed over 390 instruments, and developed geospatial products to measure and communicate the extent of coastal and inland flooding.
Joint Ecosystem Modeling: Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow Marl Prairie Indicator
Marl prairie is the most diverse freshwater vegetation community in the Greater Everglades and provides the only suitable habitat for the federally endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow (CSSS; Ammodramus maritimus mirabilis).
Joint Ecosystem Modeling: EverSnail
EverSnail, developed in collaboration with the University of West Florida, is an age- and size-structured spatially-explicit landscape model of native apple snails (Pomacea paludosa).
Florida Bay at Sunset, 2018
After a long day collecting cores, the team of scientists watch the sun set over the Florida Bay.
Mangroves Surrounding a Playa, Florida Bay 2018
Mangroves grow along the outside of a playa, one of may in the Florida Bay area.
Collecting a core from a reef
Two divers work to collect a long core sample from a coral reef in Florida.
National Oil and Gas Assessment Provinces
This is a graphic from the USGS National Oil and Gas Assessment Explorer application, which allows user to drill into 70 oil and gas assessment provinces throughout the United States.
A broken slab is all that's left of Fish Inn after Hurricane Michael
A broken concrete foundation and some shattered floor tiles were all that remained of the sea turtle researchers' field station and home base after Category Four Hurricane Michael struck Cape San Blas on Oct. 10, 2018.
Image of the Week - Hurricane Michael
Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on October 10, 2018.
Landsat 7 images captured before and after highlight the destructive path of the Category 4 storm.
Mexico Beach was all but demolished, with homes left in heaps by wind and storm surge. The green leaves that pop in the September image are stripped from trees by October, and the dull
Children watch a scientist explain data collection at the Science Fest
Children at the Science Festival in St. Petersburg, Florida, watch as a scientist explains how personal watercraft are used to collect bathymetric data.
Coral cores like this one reveal geologic history of Keys reefs
USGS Research Oceanographer Lauren Toth and Oceanographer Anastasios Stathakopoulos study a coral-reef core in the USGS’s Core Archive in St. Petersburg, Florida. Photo: Dominique Gallery, USGS.
Hurricane Michael cut deep into Panhandle dunes
A deeply eroded sand dune on the beach at Cape San Blas shows Hurricane Michael's impact on parts of the Florida Panhandle shoreline.
Hurricane Michael Batters Florida Panhandle
Landsat 7 images captured before and after highlight the destructive path of the Category 4 storm.
Hurricane Michael destroyed many houses on Cape San Blas, Florida
A beach house in Cape San Blas, Florida destroyed by Hurricane Michael, which struck the Florida Panhandle as a Category Four storm Oct. 10, 2018.
New Gulf of Mexico network speeds USGS hurricane preparations
Each one these blue dots represents a site where a storm-tide sensor bracket has been installed for the Gulf of Mexico pre-defined network. There are currently 85 brackets in Florida, 6 in Alabama, 3 in Mississippi, 18 in Louisiana and 26 in Texas, for a total of 138 bracketed sites. (Not all brackets will be used in all storms.)
At 12:32 am Alaska time on January 23, 2018, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake shook Alaska residents out of their beds and set off fears of a tsunami all down the West Coast. Fortunately, the tsunami was only a few inches in height, but within an hour of the earthquake in Alaska, waves of a different sort were hitting far away in Florida.
Florida's second-largest turtle rescue of 21st century is “exhausting, inspiring,” USGS biologist says

A new article compairs pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and salinity data from 10 Florida shellfish estuaries and shellfish bed stations.
It may be hard to believe the legend that sailors long-at-sea once considered manatees to be mermaids. The manatee nickname – the “Sea Cow” – which comes from the herbivores’ affinity for grazing on vegetation and their slow, ambling way just makes more sense. But a U.S. Geological Survey video reveals that while they may be cow-like, they also have more than a bit of the magical mermaid to them.
Coastal communities count on beaches for recreation and for protection from large waves, but beaches are vulnerable to threats such as erosion by storms and flooding. Whether beaches grow, shrink, or even disappear depends in part on what happens just offshore. How do features like shifting sandbars affect waves, currents, and the movement of sand from the beach to offshore and back?
Reporters: Do you want to accompany a USGS field crew as they work in the field to document how high the flood waters and storm surge from Hurricane Irma reached around the Jacksonville, Tampa and Fort Myers Areas?
If so, please contact Jeanne Robbins, jrobbins@usgs.gov, 919-571-4017.
Editor’s note: this news release will be updated online with more information on the streamgage records being set in Florida as it becomes available
To learn more about USGS’ role providing science to decision makers before, during and after Hurricane Irma, visit the USGS Hurricane Irma page.
To learn more about USGS’ role providing science to decision makers before, during and after Hurricane Irma, visit the USGS Hurricane Irma page.
A carbonatite here, a glacial moraine there, a zig-zagging fault or two, even a behemoth of a batholith. The geology of the 50 States is an enormous patchwork of varied forms, beautiful in their variance but challenging to present as a single map.
Larger-than-average low and no oxygen area may affect the region’s shrimp fisheries
A new U.S. Geological Survey study that looked at the extensive harmful algal bloom that plagued Florida last year found far more types of cyanobacteria present than previously known.