Publications
Scientific reports, journal articles, and information products produced by USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center scientists.
Filter Total Items: 1337
Doubling of coastal flooding frequency within decades due to sea-level rise
Global climate change drives sea-level rise, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding. In most coastal regions, the amount of sea-level rise occurring over years to decades is significantly smaller than normal ocean-level fluctuations caused by tides, waves, and storm surge. However, even gradual sea-level rise can rapidly increase the frequency and severity of coastal flooding. So far, global
Authors
Sean Vitousek, Patrick L. Barnard, Charles H. Fletcher, Neil Frazer, Li H. Erikson, Curt D. Storlazzi
Can beaches survive climate change?
Anthropogenic climate change is driving sea level rise, leading to numerous impacts on the coastal zone, such as increased coastal flooding, beach erosion, cliff failure, saltwater intrusion in aquifers, and groundwater inundation. Many beaches around the world are currently experiencing chronic erosion as a result of gradual, present-day rates of sea level rise (about 3 mm/year) and human-driven
Authors
Sean Vitousek, Patrick L. Barnard, Patrick W. Limber
Formation of Fe-Mn crusts within a continental margin environment
This study examines Fe-Mn crusts that form on seamounts along the California continental-margin (CCM), within the United States 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. The study area extends from approximately 30° to 38° North latitudes and from 117° to 126° West longitudes. The area of study is a tectonically active northeast Pacific plate boundary region and is also part of the North Pacific
Authors
Tracey A. Conrad, James R. Hein, Adina Paytan, David A. Clague
Oregon OCS seafloor mapping: Selected lease blocks relevant to renewable energy
In 2014 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) entered into Intra-agency agreement M13PG00037 to map an area of the Oregon Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off of Coos Bay, Oregon, under consideration for development of a floating wind energy farm. The BOEM requires seafloor mapping and site characterization studies in order to evaluate the impact of seaflo
Authors
Guy R. Cochrane, Lenaïg G. Hemery, Sarah K. Henkel
A foundation for future assessment and management of groundwater resources
Sequence stratigraphic models for the Pleistocene to Holocene sediments of the Los Angeles (LA) Basin will provide better understanding of
regional groundwater flow and have helped identify seawater intrusion pathways into important groundwater aquifers. Because groundwater
provides more than one-third of the municipal water supply for the coastal LA Basin, the aquifer architecture of this system
Authors
Kenneth D. Ehman, Brian D. Edwards
The California Seafloor and Coastal Mapping Program – Providing science and geospatial data for California's State Waters
The California Seafloor and Coastal Mapping Program (CSCMP) is a collaborative effort to develop comprehensive bathymetric, geologic, and habitat maps and data for California's State Waters. CSCMP began in 2007 when the California Ocean Protection Council (OPC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) allocated funding for high-resolution bathymetric mapping, largely to suppo
Authors
Samuel Y. Johnson, Guy R. Cochrane, Nadine E. Golden, Peter Dartnell, Stephen Hartwell, Susan A. Cochran, Janet Watt
A new model for turbidity current behavior based on integration of flow monitoring and precision coring in a submarine canyon
Submarine turbidity currents create some of the largest sediment accumulations on Earth, yet there are few direct measurements of these flows. Instead, most of our understanding of turbidity currents results from analyzing their deposits in the sedimentary record. However, the lack of direct flow measurements means that there is considerable debate regarding how to interpret flow properties from a
Authors
William O. Symons, Esther J. Sumner, Charles K. Paull, Matthieu J.B. Cartigny, Jingping Xu, Katherine L. Maier, Thomas Lorenson, Peter J. Talling
Geotechnical aspects of the 2016 MW 6.2, MW 6.0, and MW 7.0 Kumamoto earthquakes
The 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes are a series of events that began with an earthquake of moment magnitude 6.2 on the Hinagu Fault on April 14, 2016, followed by another foreshock of moment magnitude 6.0 on the Hinagu Fault on April 15, 2016, and a larger moment magnitude 7.0 event on the Futagawa Fault on April 16, 2016 beneath Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture on Kyushu, Japan. These events are the
Authors
Robert E. Kayen, Shideh Dashti, T. Kokusho, H. Hazarika, Kevin Franke, N. K. Oettle, Brad Wham, Jenny Ramirez Calderon, Dallin Briggs, Samantha Guillies, Katherine Cheng, Yutaka Tanoue, Katsuji Takematsu, Daisuke Matsumoto, Takayuki Morinaga, Hideo Furuichi, Yuuta Kitano, Masanori Tajiri, Babloo Chaudhary, Kengo Nishimura, Chu Chu
Seismic displacement of gently-sloping coastal and marine sediment under multidirectional earthquake loading
Gentle sediment-laden slopes are typical of the onshore coastal zone and offshore continental shelf and slope. Coastal sediment are commonly young weakly consolidated materials that are well stratified, have low strength, and can mobilize shear displacements at low levels of stress. Seismically-driven plastic displacements of these sediment pose a hazard to coastal cities, buried onshore utilities
Authors
Robert E. Kayen
Coastal river plumes: Collisions and coalescence
Plumes of buoyant river water spread in the ocean from river mouths, and these plumes influence water quality, sediment dispersal, primary productivity, and circulation along the world’s coasts. Most investigations of river plumes have focused on large rivers in a coastal region, for which the physical spreading of the plume is assumed to be independent from the influence of other buoyant plumes.
Authors
Jonathan Warrick, Katherine L Farnsworth
A model integrating longshore and cross-shore processes for predicting long-term shoreline response to climate change
We present a shoreline change model for coastal hazard assessment and management planning. The model, CoSMoS-COAST (Coastal One-line Assimilated Simulation Tool), is a transect-based, one-line model that predicts short-term and long-term shoreline response to climate change in the 21st century. The proposed model represents a novel, modular synthesis of process-based models of coastline evolution
Authors
Sean Vitousek, Patrick L. Barnard, Patrick W. Limber, Li H. Erikson, Blake Cole
Extreme oceanographic forcing and coastal response due to the 2015–2016 El Niño
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation is the dominant mode of interannual climate variability across the Pacific Ocean basin, with influence on the global climate. The two end members of the cycle, El Niño and La Niña, force anomalous oceanographic conditions and coastal response along the Pacific margin, exposing many heavily populated regions to increased coastal flooding and erosion hazards. However
Authors
Patrick L. Barnard, Daniel J. Hoover, David M. Hubbard, Alexander G. Snyder, Bonnie C. Ludka, Jonathan Allan, George M. Kaminsky, Ruggiero, Timu W. Gallien, Laura Gabel, Diana McCandless, Heather M. Weiner, Nicholas Cohn, Dylan L. Anderson, Katherine A. Serafin