Images

USGS scientists Patrick Barnard (left) and Jeff Hansen navigate personal watercraft equipped with GPS and echo sounders through the waters of San Francisco Bay. They are collecting bathymetric, or depth, information in order to create maps of the bottom of the Bay.

USGS Ocean Engineer Gerry Hatcher walks along South Jetty Beach, south of Ventura Harbor in southern California, to record beach elevations using a handheld computer and mobile GPS equipment.

This photograph of the seafloor off the California coast also shows jellyfish in the water column. This photograph was collected as part of the California Seafloor and Coastal Mapping Program.

A kelp greenling fish swimming above a seafloor of mixed gravel, cobble and rock outcrop with scattered shell. Fish is approx. 20 cm (8 inches) long. Image acquired 1 km (0.62 miles) offshore Half Moon Bay, California at a depth of 14 meters (46 ft). Also in the image are encrusting sponges, red algae (seaweed), and orange cup corals.

Boulders and biota off San Gregorio, California, in water approximately 30 meters (100 feet) deep. Organisms include bat stars, small sea anemones, strawberry anemone, cup corals, and frilly sea cucumbers.

Eroding bluffs along Alaska’s Arctic coast. Note light permafrost in bluff face, below top few feet of soil and vegetation.

This nearly century-old whaling boat rests along the Beaufort Sea coast near Lonely, Alaska in July, 2007. The boat was washed away to sea just a few months later.

Apartments on the edge of a crumbling cliff in Pacifica, California. Rip-rap was added to the base of the cliff in hopes of delaying further cliff erosion.

A NOAA image of the bathymetry north of Puerto Rico. Two ancient submarine landslides are visible as head scarps (labeled Loiza and Arecibo Amphitheaters). Seafloor fissures are indicated by black arrows, and dashed lines outline debris flows from past failures. Map annotated by Uri ten Brink, USGS

Contour plots of SSC for the spatial surveys during trade-wind conditions on the reef flat. (a) SSC from the low tide survey. The highest SSC (60e70 mg/l) were located in a nearshore band, and east of the fish ponds and Kaunakakai wharf. (b) SSC from the high tide surveys.

A multibeam bathymetric survey that produced unprecedented high resolution images of the mouth of San Francisco Bay was conducted in 2004 and 2005.

Jeff Hansen on an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, in 2006. The ATV is equipped with instrumentation which records beach topography.

Photograph of Pingok Island, Alaska, reveals physical features of a changing Arctic: collapsing bluffs, salt-killed tundra (lighter brown near the bluff edge), and drained thermokarst lakes (rust-colored depressions).

This photograph shows the Arctic Coastal Plain of northern Alaska. Coastal erosion along the Arctic coast is chronic, widespread and potentially accelerating, posing threats to infrastructure important for defense and energy purposes, natural shoreline habitats and nearby Native communities.

An oblique aerial photograph shows the currently active Long Range Radar Site on Barter Island, formerly a DEW Line (Distant Early Warning) station that was deactivated in 1990. The Cold War-era landfill in the foreground of the photograph was at immediate risk from coastal erosion in 2006 and has since been relocated farther inland.

This photograph shows ice-wedge polygons and an eroding shoreline at Cape Halkett on the Beaufort Sea coast of Alaska. Coastal erosion along the Arctic coast is chronic, widespread, and potentially accelerating, posing threats to infrastructure important for defense and energy purposes, natural shoreline habitats, and nearby Native communities.

Photograph of barrier islands near the western terminus of Icy Reef located on the Beaufort Sea coast of Alaska, looking south. Egaksrak Lagoon separates the islands from the low-lying mainland coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Brooks Range in the background.

Coral atolls are normally long, thin bars of white sand that rise just a few meters above sea level. The island or island group surrounds a hollow center where a volcanic peak once was. The atoll shown in this photo-like satellite image is the island of Tureia, in French Polynesia, in the South Pacific Ocean.

Photo of Dinkey Creek in the southern Sierra Nevada, California, showing a small waterfall cascading down a bedrock slope.

Landsat image of Maui, Hawaiʻi, with the small island of Kahoʻolawe to its south.

Personal watercraft equipped with GPS and sonar (echo sounder) is used to collect detailed, nearshore bathymetry (depth) information.