Publications
Scientific reports, journal articles, and information products produced by USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center scientists.
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Filter Total Items: 1337
Pleistocene vertical motions of the Costa Rican outer forearc from subducting topography and a migrating fracture zone triple junction
Understanding the links between subducting slabs and upper-plate deformation is a longstanding goal in the field of tectonics. New 3D seismic sequence stratigraphy, mapped within the Costa Rica Seismogenesis Project (CRISP) seismic-reflection volume offshore southern Costa Rica, spatiotemporally constrains several Pleistocene outer forearc processes and provides clearer connections to subducting p
Authors
Joel H. Edwards, Jared W. Kluesner, Eli A. Silver, Nathan L. Bangs
Challenges of forecasting flooding on coral reef–lined coasts
Understanding wave-driven coastal flooding is a challenging scientific problem; the need for forecasts is becoming more urgent because of sea level rise, climate change, and ever-growing coastal populations. The tools developed for sandy shorelines are generally not applicable to coral reef–lined coasts with their complex bathymetry, hydrodynamically rough reef platforms, steep and poorly sorted b
Authors
Curt D. Storlazzi
National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 01 offshore India; gas hydrate systems as revealed by hydrocarbon gas geochemistry
The National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 01 (NGHP-01) targeted gas hydrate accumulations offshore of the Indian Peninsula and along the Andaman convergent margin. The primary objectives of coring were to understand the geologic and geochemical controls on the accumulation of methane hydrate and their linkages to underlying petroleum systems. Four areas were investigated: 1) the Kerala-Konkan Ba
Authors
Thomas Lorenson, Timothy S. Collett
Corrugated megathrust revealed offshore from Costa Rica
Exhumed faults are rough, often exhibiting topographic corrugations oriented in the direction of slip; such features are fundamental to mechanical processes that drive earthquakes and fault evolution. However, our understanding of corrugation genesis remains limited due to a lack of in situ observations at depth, especially at subducting plate boundaries. Here we present three-dimensional seismic
Authors
Joel H. Edwards, Jared W. Kluesner, Eli A. Silver, Emily E. Brodsky, Daniel S. Brothers, Nathan L. Bangs, James D. Kirkpatrick, Ruby Wood, Kristina Okamato
Coastal knickpoints and the competition between fluvial and wave-driven erosion on rocky coastlines
Active margin coastlines are distinguished by rock erosion that acts in two different directions: waves erode the coast horizontally or landwards, a process that creates sea cliffs; and rivers and streams erode the landscape vertically via channel incision. The relative rates of each process exert a dominant control on coastline morphology. Using a model of river channel incision and sea-cliff ret
Authors
Patrick W. Limber, Patrick L. Barnard
Reply to ‘Wolf-triggered trophic cascades and stream channel dynamics in Olympic National Park: a comment on East et al. (2017)’ by Robert Beschta and William Ripple
No abstract available.
Authors
Amy E. East, Kurt J. Jenkins, Patricia J. Happe, Jennifer A. Bountry, Timothy J. Beechie, Mark C. Mastin, Joel B. Sankey, Timothy J. Randle
Uptake and distribution of organo-iodine in deep-sea corals
Understanding iodine concentration, transport, and bioavailability is essential in evaluating iodine's impact to the environment and its effectiveness as an environmental biogeotracer. While iodine and its radionuclides have proven to be important tracers in geologic and biologic studies, little is known about transport of this element to the deep sea and subsequent uptake in deep-sea coral habita
Authors
Nancy G. Prouty, E. Brendan Roark, Leslye M. Mohon, Ching-Chih Chang
Determining on-fault earthquake magnitude distributions from integer programming
Earthquake magnitude distributions among faults within a fault system are determined from regional seismicity and fault slip rates using binary integer programming. A synthetic earthquake catalog (i.e., list of randomly sampled magnitudes) that spans millennia is first formed, assuming that regional seismicity follows a Gutenberg-Richter relation. Each earthquake in the synthetic catalog can occur
Authors
Eric L. Geist, Thomas E. Parsons
Testing earthquake links in Mexico from 1978 up to the 2017 M=8.1 Chiapas and M=7.1 Puebla shocks
The M = 8.1 Chiapas and the M = 7.1 Puebla earthquakes occurred in the bending part of the subducting Cocos plate 11 days and ~600 km apart, a range that puts them well outside the typical aftershock zone. We find this to be a relatively common occurrence in Mexico, with 14% of M > 7.0 earthquakes since 1900 striking more than 300 km apart and within a 2 week interval, not different from a randomi
Authors
Margarita Segou, Thomas E. Parsons
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 removal of two large dams on the Elwha River (Washingto
Authors
Andrew C. Ritchie, Jonathan Warrick, Amy E. East, Christopher S. Magirl, Andrew W. Stevens, Jennifer A. Bountry, Timothy J. Randle, Christopher A. Curran, Robert C. Hilldale, Jeffrey J. Duda, Ian M. Miller, George R. Pess, Emily Eidam, Melissa M. Foley, Randall McCoy, Andrea S. Ogston
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Natural Hazards Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Arizona Water Science Center, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Washington Water Science Center, Western Fisheries Research Center, Sediment Lab Suite and Carbon Analysis Laboratory
The tectonically controlled San Gabriel Channel–Lobe Transition Zone, Catalina Basin, Southern California Borderland
High-resolution geophysical data across the Catalina Basin, offshore southern California, USA, reveal a complex channel–lobe transition zone (CLTZ) and provide an opportunity to characterize an entire seafloor CLTZ in a tectonically active and confined-basin setting. The seafloor morphology, distribution of depositional and erosional features, and location of depocenters in the CLTZ are controlled
Authors
Katherine L. Maier, Emily C. Roland, Maureen A. L. Walton, James E. Conrad, Daniel S. Brothers, Peter Dartnell, Jared W. Kluesner
Removal of San Clemente Dam did more than restore fish passage
No abstract available.
Authors
Thomas H. Williams, Amy E. East, Douglas P. Smith, David A. Boughton, Nate Mantua, Lee R. Harrison