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Publications

Scientific reports, journal articles, and information products produced by USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center scientists.

Filter Total Items: 1337

Drivers, dynamics and impacts of changing Arctic coasts

Arctic coasts are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and the loss of permafrost, sea ice and glaciers. Assessing the influence of anthropogenic warming on Arctic coastal dynamics, however, is challenged by the limited availability of observational, oceanographic and environmental data. Yet, with the majority of permafrost coasts being erosive, coupled with pro
Authors
Anna M. Irrgang, Mette Bendixen, Louise M. Farquharson, Alisa V. Baranskaya, Li H. Erikson, Ann E. Gibbs, Stanislav A. Ogorodov, Pier Paul Overduin, Hugues Lantuit, Mikhail N. Grigoriev, Benjamin M. Jones

Gas hydrates on Alaskan marine margins

Gas hydrate distributions on the marine margins of the U.S. state of Alaska are more poorly known than those on other U.S. margins, where bottom simulating reflections have been systematically mapped on marine seismic data to support modern, quantitative assessments of gas-in-place in gas hydrates. The extent of bottom simulating reflections in the U.S. Beaufort Sea has been known since the late 1
Authors
Carolyn D. Ruppel, Patrick E. Hart

Estimates of metals contained in abyssal manganese nodules and ferromanganese crusts in the global ocean based on regional variations and genetic types of nodules

Deep-ocean ferromanganese crusts and manganese nodules are important marine repositories for global metals. Interest in these minerals as potential resources has led to detailed sampling in many regions of the global ocean, allowing for updated estimates of their global extent. Here, we present global estimates of total tonnage as well as contained metal concentrations and tonnages for ferromangan
Authors
Kira Mizell, James R. Hein, Manda Viola Au, Amy Gartman

Workshops report for mesophotic and deep benthic community fish, mobile invertebrates, sessile invertebrates and infauna

Two workshops with subject matter experts in the appropriate fields, were held in November and December 2021 to elicit guidance and feedback from the broader mesophotic and deep benthic scientific community. These workshops focused on best practices/approaches and identifying data gaps relative to habitat assessment and evaluation goals of the Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Community (MDBC) restorati
Authors
Rachel Bassett, Stacey L. Harter, Randy Clark, Ian Zink, Katherine Hornick, Jennifer Hartman, Hanna Bliska, Melissa Carle, Tracey Sutton, Amanda Demopoulos, Andy David, Kristopher Benson, Jill Bourque, Martha S. Nizinski, Nancy G. Prouty, Stephanie M. Sharuga, Alicia Caporaso, Jennifer Le, Jennifer Herting, Cheryl Morrison, Matthew Poti

Storm and tsunami overwash sediment transport inferred from recent deposits

Overwash deposits from storms and tsunamis record information about sediment transport and flow that can be used to inform hazard assessments. Here we explore deposits from two extreme wave events: (1) the 2012 Hurricane Sandy, a Category 5 hurricane that is the largest storm in the Atlantic basin on historical record, and (2) the 2011 Tohoku-oki tsunami, created by a 9.0 Mw earthquake, that was u
Authors
Bruce E. Jaffe, SeanPaul La Selle

Geochemical insights into formation of enigmatic ironstones from Rio Grande rise, South Atlantic Ocean

Rio Grande Rise (RGR) is an intraplate oceanic elevation in the South Atlantic Ocean that formed at a hotspot on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge during the Cretaceous. In spreading center and hotspot environments, ironstones form mainly by biomineralization of reduced Fe from hydrothermal fluids or oxidation of sulfide deposits. However, RGR has been considered aseismic and volcanically inactive for the pa
Authors
Mariana Benites, James R. Hein, Kira Mizell, Kenneth A. Farley, Jonathon Treffkorn, Luigi Jovane

Marine paleoseismic evidence for seismic and aseismic slip along the Hayward-Rodgers Creek fault system in northern San Pablo Bay

Distinguishing between seismic and aseismic fault slip in the geologic record is difficult, yet fundamental to estimating the seismic potential of faults and the likelihood of multi-fault ruptures. We integrated chirp sub-bottom imaging with targeted cross-fault coring and core analyses of sedimentary proxy data to characterize vertical deformation and slip behavior within an extensional fault ben
Authors
Janet Watt, Mary McGann, Renee K. Takesue, Thomas Lorenson

Late Holocene environmental change in Celestun Lagoon, Yucatan, Mexico

Epikarst estuary response to hydroclimate change remains poorly understood, despite the well-studied link between climate and karst groundwater aquifers. The influence of sea-level rise and coastal geomorphic change on these estuaries obscures climate signals, thus requiring careful development of paleoenvironmental histories to interpret the paleoclimate archives. We used foraminifera assemblages
Authors
Kyle Hardage, Joseph Street, Jorge A. Herrera-Silveira, Ferdinand Oberle, Adina Paytan

Digital Twin Earth - Coasts: Developing a fast and physics-informed surrogate model for coastal floods via neural operators

Developing fast and accurate surrogates for physics-based coastal and ocean mod- els is an urgent need due to the coastal flood risk under accelerating sea level rise, and the computational expense of deterministic numerical models. For this purpose, we develop the first digital twin of Earth coastlines with new physics-informed machine learning techniques extending the state-of-art Neural Operato
Authors
P. Jiang, N. Meinert, H. Jordão, C. Weisser, S. Holgate, A. Lavin, B. Lutjens, D. Newman, H. Wainright, C. Walker, Patrick L. Barnard

Knowledge gaps update to the 2019 IPCC special report on the ocean and cryosphere: Prospects to refine coastal flood hazard assessments and adaptation strategies with at-risk communities of Alaska

This article reviews the status of knowledge gaps and co-production process challenges that impede coastal flood hazard resilience planning in communities of northwestern Alaska, where threat levels are high. Discussion focuses on the state of knowledge arising after preparation of the 2019 IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate and highlights prospects to address ur
Authors
Dee Williams, Li H. Erikson

A characterization of deep-sea coral and sponge communities along the California and Oregon coast using a remotely operated vehicle on the EXPRESS 2018 expedition

Deep-sea coral and sponge (DSCS) communities serve as essential fish habitats (EFH) by providing shelter and nursery habitat, increasing diversity, and increasing prey availability (Freese and Wing, 2003; Bright, 2007; Baillon et al., 2012; Henderson et al., 2020). Threats to these long-lived, fragile organisms from bottom contact fishing gear, potential offshore renewable energy development, and
Authors
Tom Laidig, Diana Watters, Nancy G. Prouty, Meredith Everett, Lizzie Duncan, Liz Clarke, Chris Caldow, Amanda Demopoulos

Changes in liquefaction severity in the San Francisco Bay Area with sea-level rise

This paper studies the impacts of sea-level rise on liquefaction triggering and severity around the San Francisco Bay Area, California, for the M 7.0 “HayWired” earthquake scenario along the Hayward fault. This work emerged from stakeholder engagement for the US Geological Survey releases of the HayWired earthquake scenario and the Coastal Storm Modeling System projects, in which local planners an
Authors
Alex R. R. Grant, Anne Wein, Kevin M. Befus, Juliette Finzi-Hart, Mike Frame, Rachel Volentine, Patrick L. Barnard, Keith L. Knudsen
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