Search CMGP

Coastal and Marine Geology Program > Online Science Resource Locator > Environmental Change

Environmental Change

Online Science Resource Locator

Topic:

Region:

Content Type:

Help!
how to use this

Have an Earth Science question?

Ask-A-Geologist!

about this Topic

Coastal and nearshore environments exist in a dynamic balance between terrestrial and aquatic influences. Understanding of the delicate balance of these influencing processes is necessary to maintain the Nation's fragile coastal and marine environments. Such studies also improve our capability to predict environmental response to both human activities and natural processes, such as coastal storms and currents.

Other related USGS websites:
Global Change Research Program
El Ni�o Home Page

Project Information

Educational Materials

What
are
these?

Photographs

Movies

Maps

Publications

Data Sets

Items below are listed from most recently updated to least recently updated.

These are results 1 through 25 of 172 matches.

Research Project
USGS Coral Reef Studies

Description: Coral Reef Studies conducted in Hawaii, Florida and California.
updated: 2009-06-24 pages include:

Publication
Scientific Investigations Report 2009-5116: Topographic Change Detection at Select Archeological Sites in Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, 2006�2007

Description: Topographic change of archeological sites within the Colorado River corridor of Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) is a subject of interest to National Park Service managers and other stakeholders in the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program. Although long-term topographic change resulting from a variety of natural processes is typical in the Grand Canyon region, a continuing debate exists on whether and how controlled releases from Glen Canyon Dam, located immediately upstream of GCNP, are impacting rates of site erosion, artifact transport, and the preservation of archeological resources. Continued erosion of archeological sites threatens both the archeological resources and our future ability to study evidence of past cultural habitation. Understanding the causes and effects of archaeological site erosion requires a knowledge of several factors including the location and magnitude of the changes occurring in relation to archeological resources, the rate of the changes, and the relative contribution of several potential causes, including sediment depletion associated with managed flows from Glen Canyon Dam, site-specific weather patterns, visitor impacts, and long-term climate change. To obtain this information, highly accurate, spatially specific data are needed from sites undergoing change. Using terrestrial lidar data collection techniques and novel TIN- and GRID-based change-detection post-processing methods, we analyzed topographic data for nine archeological sites. The data were collected using three separate data collection efforts spanning 16 months (May 2006 to September 2007). Our results documented positive evidence of erosion, deposition, or both at six of the nine sites investigated during this time interval. In addition, we observed possible signs of change at two of the other sites. Erosion was concentrated in established gully drainages and averaged 12 cm to 17 cm in depth with maximum depths of 50 cm. Deposition was concentrated at specific locations outside of drainages but generally was spread over larger areas (tens to hundreds of square meters). Maximum depths of deposition averaged 12 cm to 15 cm and reached as much as 35 cm. Overall, we found that the spatial distribution and magnitudes of surface change are specific to each site and that a thorough understanding of the geomorphology, weather, and sand supply is requisite for a complete understanding of the data. Additional work in combining these results with site-specific weather, hydrology, and geomorphology data will assist in the development of working models for determining the causes of the documented topographic changes.
updated: 2009-06-16 pages include:

Research Project
USGS Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM)

Description: The goal of the USGS Northern Gulf of Mexico project is to understand the evolution of coastal ecosystems on the Northern Gulf Coast, the impact of human activities on these ecosystems, and the vulnerability of ecosystems and human communities to more frequent and more intense hurricanes in the future.
updated: 2009-05-28 pages include:

Publication
Data Series 436: Oblique Aerial Photography of the Arctic Coast of Alaska, Nulavik to Demarcation Point, August 7�10, 2006

Description: The Arctic Coastal Plain of northern Alaska, an area of strategic economic importance to the United States, is home to remote Native American communities and encompasses unique habitats of global significance. Coastal erosion along the Arctic coast is chronic and widespread; recent evidence suggests that erosion rates are among the highest in the world (up to ~16 m/yr) and may be accelerating. Coastal erosion adversely impacts energy-related infrastructure, natural shoreline habitats, and Native American communities. Climate change is thought to be a key component of recent environmental changes in the Arctic. Reduced sea-ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is one of the probable mechanisms responsible for increasing coastal exposure to wave attack and the resulting increase in erosion. Extended periods of permafrost melting and associated decrease in bluff cohesion and stability are another possible source of the increase in erosion. Several studies of selected areas on the Alaska coast document past shoreline positions and coastal change, but none have examined the entire North coast systematically. Results from these studies indicate high rates of coastal retreat that vary spatially along the coast. To address the need for a comprehensive and regionally consistent evaluation of shoreline change along the North coast of Alaska, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), as part of their Coastal and Marine Geology Program�s (CMGP) National Assessment of Shoreline Change Study, is evaluating shoreline change from Peard Bay to the United States/Canadian border, using historical maps and photography and a standardized methodology that is consistent with other shoreline-change studies along the Nation�s coastlines (for example, URL http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/shoreline-change/ (last accessed March 2, 2009). This report contains photographs collected during an aerial-reconnaissance survey conducted in support of this study. An accompanying ESRI ArcGIS shape file (and plain-text copy) indicates the position of the aircraft and time when each photograph was taken.
updated: 2009-05-05 pages include:

Research Project
Coastal Change Hazards: Hurricanes and Extreme Storms

Description: This project investigates the coastal impacts of hurricanes and extreme storms, such as Hurricanes Isabel (2003), Dennis (1999), Bonnie & Georges (1998), and winter storms, such as those associated with the 1997-98 El Ni�o.
updated: 2009-04-28 pages include:

Publication
Open-File Report 2009-1029: Coastal processes study of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, California

Description: By Patrick L. Barnard, David L. Revell, Dan Hoover, Jon Warrick, John Brocatus, Amy E. Draut, Pete Dartnell, Edwin Elias, Neomi Mustain, Pat E. Hart, and Holly F. Ryan. The Santa Barbara littoral cell (SBLC) is a complex coastal system with significant management challenges. The coastline ranges broadly in exposure to wave energy, fluvial inputs, hard structures, and urbanization. Geologic influence (structural control) on coastline orientation exerts an important control on local beach behavior, with anthropogenic alterations and the episodic nature of sediment supply and transport also playing important roles.
updated: 2009-03-27 pages include:

Publication
Open-File Report 2008-1192: Geologic Resource Evaluation of Pu�uhonua O Hōnaunau National Historical Park, Hawai�i; Part I, Geology and Coastal Landforms

Description: Geologic resource inventories of lands managed by the National Park Service (NPS) are important products for the parks and are designed to provide scientific information to better manage park resources. Park-specific geologic reports are used to identify geologic features and processes that are relevant to park ecosystems, evaluate the impact of human activities on geologic features and processes, identify geologic research and monitoring needs, and enhance opportunities for education and interpretation. These geologic reports are planned to provide a brief geologic history of the park and address specific geologic issues forming a link between the park geology and the resource manager...
updated: 2009-02-17 pages include:

Publication
USGS Gulf Coast Science Conference and Florida Integrated Science Center Meeting: Proceedings with Abstracts, October 20-23, 2008, Orlando, Florida

Description: Talks, posters, and abstracts from the USGS Gulf Coast Science Conference and Florida Integrated Science Center Meeting.
updated: 2009-01-29 pages include:

Publication
Scientific Investigations Report 2007-5101: The Coral Reef of South Moloka�i, Hawai�i�Portrait of a Sediment-Threatened Fringing Reef

Description: In this landmark volume, U.S. Geological Survey researchers and their colleagues have developed and applied a remarkably integrated approach to the reefs of Moloka�i, combining geology, oceanography, and biology to provide an in-depth understanding of the processes that have made these reefs grow and that now limit them. They have joined old fashioned natural history of marine animals and plants with study of the geological evolution of the island, hydrology, meteorology, and land-use history, to an arsenal of new methods of remote sensing, including aerial photography, laser ranging, infrared thermal mapping, seismic reflection, in-situ instrumentation to measure chemical parameters of water quality, and direct measurements of the physical driving forces affecting them�such as wave energy, currents, sedimentation, and sediment transport. They provide a level of documentation and insight that has never been available for any reef before.
updated: 2008-11-19 pages include:

Publication
Open-File Report 2007-1219: Science and Management in the Hanalei Watershed, A Trans-Disciplinary Approach

Description: The results of recent studies in the Hanalei watershed are impressive, both in content and breadth. Funded, directed, and/or conducted by investigators from many disciplines from local organizations (the Hanalei Watershed Hui), the University of Hawai�i, the State of Hawai�i (Department of Health, Department of Land and Natural Resources), and Federal organizations (U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency), their sum total have contributed markedly to our understanding of processes in the watershed. There has been an overwhelming amount of information that has been collected in the Hanalei Bay Watershed from Mt. Waialeale to the far reefs in just the past 5 years. This workshop was initiated to document our collective understanding, better integrate our results, and identify the salient issues that remain to be studied.
updated: 2008-10-06 pages include:

Research Project
WCMG Coastal Processes Studies

Description: California's beaches and nearshore regions are valuable economic and recreational resources but also provide habitats for numerous sensitive species. During winter storms, the coast represents a potentially dangerous interface between ocean and land, nature and humans. Storms produce high waves, strong currents, and elevated sea level that can rapidly erode beaches and inundate low-lying coastal regions, damaging and/or destroying public and private infrastructure as well as stressing coastal ecosystems. Over longer-time scales (e.g. decadal), persistent erosion exacerbated by the pressures of coastal development, reduction in sediment availability and climate change, can result in severely depleted beaches. The USGS performs research along the California coast to understand the physical processes that control coastal change on time scales from individual storms to decades to support the efforts of local, state and government agencies to make informed coastal management decisions to most effectively preserve and protect this valuable resource.
updated: 2008-09-23 pages include:

Research Project
Southern California Coastal Hazards - USGS WCMG

Description: Southern California Coastal Hazards Study of the USGS Western Coastal and Marine Geology Team
updated: 2008-09-23 pages include:

Research Project
Santa Barbara-Ventura Coastal Processes Study - USGS WCMG

Description: Santa Barbara/Ventura Coastal Processes Study of the USGS Western Coastal and Marine Geology Team. Whereas coastal urban development and infrastructure are largely fixed with respect to location, shoreline and bluff positions can change substantially over time in response to natural processes. These natural coastal changes can damage or undermine urban structures, resulting in substantial property loss for federal, state, local and individual land owners. Urban development can also indirectly influence coastal change by interrupting natural supplies or transport of sediment in littoral cells. Thus, it is important to evaluate the rates, patterns and causes of coastal change to better manage sediment resources and predict change hazards in coastal urban settings. The Santa Barbara and Ventura County coast represents a littoral cell along the California coast extending from (at least) Point Conception to the Mugu submarine canyon. The beaches along this littoral cell are an important economic resource to the region, and there is evidence that shoreline and bluff erosion are impacting these beaches. Coastal change in the Santa Barbara/Ventura region is complicated, however, by the irregular coastline (there are numerous rocky headlands, river deltas and offshore reefs), variability in wave forcing, structures such as harbors, groins, piers, dams and landscape urbanization, variability in tectonic uplift, and limited information on littoral sediment sources. In response to the potential for coastal change, BEACON (Beach Erosion Authority for Clean Oceans and Nourishment) and the City of Carpinteria have provided a combined $700K in funding for USGS WCMG to evaluate the coastal change patterns and processes along the Santa Barbara/Ventura County coast until the end of 2008.
updated: 2008-08-12 pages include:

Publication
Open-File Report 2008-1327 - Interferometric Sidescan Bathymetry, Sediment and Foraminiferal Analyses; a New Look at Tomales Bay, California

Description: U.S.G.S. Open-File Report 2008-1327 entitled, Interferometric Sidescan Bathymetry, Sediment and Foraminiferal Analyses; a New Look at Tomales Bay, California. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) in collaboration with Point Reyes National Sea Shore (PRNS), and the Tomales Bay Watershed Council [http://www.tomalesbaywatershed.org/] has completed a detailed bathymetric survey, and sediment and foraminiferal analyses of the floor of Tomales Bay, California. The study goals are to detail the submarine morphology, the sediment distribution, sedimentary features, and distribution of foraminifera to provide a framework for future studies. The USGS collected swath bathymetric data with a SEA SWATHplus interferometric sidescan sonar system (2004, 2005) and an echo sounder system (2006). The data were processed into continuous mosaic images that show bathymetric detail of the bay floor with 0.2-m vertical and 4.0�m horizontal resolution. Acoustic backscatter data from the 2004 and 2005 surveys were processed into 2-m resolution grids. In addition, 27 sediment samples were collected from various parts of the bay for grain size analyses and a comprehensive study of the distribution of foraminifera in Tomales Bay. The foraminiferal analysis determined that the invasive foraminifera Trochammina hadai from Japan was present in Tomales Bay. The project was conducted in response to a request from the National Park Service, and the Tomales Bay Watershed Council who voiced a need to look at the environmental impacts of human input to the surrounding watersheds that ultimately flow into the bay. The mapping, sediment, and foraminiferal data establish a baseline survey for future comparisons of possible geologic and anthropogenic changes that might occur due to changes in land use or development in the surrounding watershed. These data may also aid in determining the possible pathways of pollutants entering the bay from the surrounding watersheds.
updated: 2008-07-31 pages include:

Research Project
Decision Support for Coastal Science and Management

Description: The Decision Support for Coastal Science and Management project, sponsored by the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program (CMGP) is supporting the creation of new capabilities for the synoptic remote sensing of coastal-marine and terrestrial environments based on aircraft and satellite sensors. These coastal remote-sensing, mapping, and point-monitoring tools constitute a unique integrated package of instrumentation and software that may be deployed in support of appropriately timed and scaled zoning decisions by management authorities in order to conserve and sensibly exploit nearshore coastal and marine ecosystems.
updated: 2008-07-15 pages include:

Publication
Open-File Report 2008-1215: Winds, Waves, Tides, and the Resulting Flow Patterns and Fluxes of Water, Sediment, and Coral Larvae off West Maui, Hawaii

Description: A series of recent studies has focused on the flow patterns and particle fluxes along the coast of West Maui, Hawaii, USA, from Honolua south to Puumana. From those studies a relatively good understanding has emerged of the physical processes that influence the relative amount of suspended sediment in nearshore waters and the circulation patterns that transport sediment and coral larvae along the coast and between islands. This report is a synthesis of our existing knowledge on the nature of flow and transport off West Maui.
updated: 2008-07-02 pages include:

Publication
Florida Integrated Science Center (FISC) Coral Reef Research

Description: The U.S. Geological Survey Florida Integrated Science Center (USGS�FISC) is conducting a coordinated Coral Reef Research Project beginning in 2009. Specific research topics are aimed at addressing priorities identified in the �Strategic Science for Coral Ecosystems 2007-2011� document (U.S. Geological Survey, 2007). Planned research will include a blend of historical, monitoring, and process studies aimed at improving our understanding of the development, current status and function, and likely future changes in coral ecosystems. Topics such as habitat characterization and distribution, coral disease, and trends in biogenic calcification are major themes of understanding reef structure, ecological integrity, and responses to global change.
updated: 2008-07-01 pages include:

Publication
Land Area Change in Coastal Louisiana: A Multidecadal Perspective (from 1956 to 2006)

Description: The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) analyzed changes in the configuration of land and water in coastal Louisiana by using a sequential series of 14 data sets summarizing land and water areas from 1956 to 2006. The purpose of this study is to provide a spatially and temporally consistent source of quantitative information on land area across coastal Louisiana, broken into three physiographic provinces (the term "coastal Louisiana" is used to present data on the collective area).
updated: 2008-05-21 pages include:

Publication
EAARL Topography-Thomas Stone National

Description: Digital map atlas of lidar-derived topography maps for Thomas Stone National Historic Site
updated: 2008-04-28 pages include:

Publication
USGS-NPS-NASA EAARL Submarine Topography-Northern Florida Keys

Description: Digital map atlas of lidar-derived submarine topography maps for the Northern Florida Keys Reef Tract
updated: 2008-04-25 pages include:

Publication
EAARL Topography-Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (SAHI)

Description: Digital atlas of lidar-derived topography maps for Sagamore Hill National Historic Site
updated: 2008-04-24 pages include:

Publication
EAARL Topography-Gateway National Recreation Area-Home

Description: Digital map atlas of lidar-derived topography maps for the Gateway National Recreation Area
updated: 2008-04-23 pages include:

Publication
EAARL Submarine Topography-Florida Keys National Marine

Description: Digital atlas of Lidar-derived submarine topography maps for Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
updated: 2008-04-21 pages include:

Publication
EAARL First Return Topography�Fire Island National Seashore

Description: Digital map atlas of lidar-derived topography maps for Assateague Island National Seashore
updated: 2008-04-21 pages include:

Publication
USGS-NPS-NASA EAARL Bare Earth Topography - Fire Island National Seashore

Description: Digital map atlas of Lidar-derived topography maps for Fire Island National Seashore
updated: 2008-04-21 pages include:

These are results 1 through 25 of 172 matches.

Coastal and Marine Geology Program > Online Science Resource Locator > Environmental Change