Publications
Scientific reports, journal articles, and information products produced by USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center scientists.
USGS Pubs Warehouse
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Sound Waves Newsletter
Sound Waves Newsletter
Browse issues of the Sound Waves newsletter, featuring coastal and marine research news from across the USGS.
Filter Total Items: 1337
Isostatic gravity map of the Point Sur 30' x 60' quadrangle and adjacent areas, California
This isostatic residual gravity map is part of a regional effort to investigate the tectonics and water resources of the central Coast Range. This map serves as a basis for modeling the shape of basins and for determining the location and geometry of faults in the area. Local spatial variations in the Earth's gravity field (after removing variations caused by instrument drift, earth-tides, latitud
Authors
J. T. Watt, R. L. Morin, V. E. Langenheim
Flow speed estimated by inverse modeling of sandy sediment deposited by the 29 September 2009 tsunami near Satitoa, east Upolu, Samoa
Sandy deposits from the 29 September 2009 tsunami on the east coast of Upolu, Samoa were investigated to document their characteristics and used to apply an inverse sediment transport model to estimate tsunami flow speed. Sandy deposits 6 to 15 cm thick formed from ~ 25 to ~ 250 m inland. Sedimentary layers in the deposits, that are defined by vertical grain size variation and contacts, are interp
Authors
Bruce E. Jaffe, Mark Buckley, Bruce M. Richmond, Luke Strotz, Samuel Etienne, Kate Clark, Steve Watt, Guy R. Gelfenbaum, James Goff
More than 100 Years of Background-Level Sedimentary Metals, Nisqually River Delta, South Puget Sound, Washington
The Nisqually River Delta is located about 25 km south of the Tacoma Narrows in the southern reach of Puget Sound. Delta evolution is controlled by sedimentation from the Nisqually River and erosion by strong tidal currents that may reach 0.95 m/s in the Nisqually Reach. The Nisqually River flows 116 km from the Cascade Range, including the slopes of Mount Rainier, through glacially carved valleys
Authors
Renee K. Takesue, Peter W. Swarzenski
Insights on the 2009 South Pacific tsunami in Samoa and Tonga from field surveys and numerical simulations
An Mw ≈ 8.1 earthquake south of the Samoan Islands on 29 September 2009 generated a tsunami that killed 189 people. From 4 to 11 October, an International Tsunami Survey Team surveyed the seven major islands of the Samoan archipelago. The team measured locally focused runup heights of 17 m at Poloa and inundation of more than 500 m at Pago Pago. A follow-up expedition from 23 to 28 November survey
Authors
Hermann M. Fritz, José C. Borrero, Costas E. Synolakis, Emile A. Okal, Robert Weiss, Vasily V. Titov, Bruce E. Jaffe, Spyros Foteinis, Patrick J. Lynett, I-Chi Chan, Philip L-F. Liu
Petroleum hydrocarbons in sediment from the northern Gulf of Mexico shoreline, Texas to Florida
Petroleum hydrocarbons were extracted and analyzed from shoreline sediment collected from the northern Gulf of Mexico (nGOM) coastline that could potentially be impacted by Macondo-1 (M-1) well oil. Sediment was collected before M-1 well oil made significant local landfall and analyzed for baseline conditions by a suite of diagnostic petroleum biomarkers. Oil residue in trace quantities was detect
Authors
Robert J. Rosenbauer, Pamela L. Campbell, Angela Lam, T.D. Lorenson, Frances D. Hostettler, Burt Thomas, Florence L. Wong
Book review: Rogue waves in the ocean
Rogue Waves in the Ocean (2009) is a follow-on text to Extreme Ocean Waves (2008) edited by Pelinovsky and Kharif, both published by Springer. Unlike the earlier text, which is a compilation of papers on a variety of extreme waves that was the subject of a scientific conference in 2007, Rogues Waves in the Ocean is written, rather than edited, by Kharif, Pelinovsky, and Slunyaev and is focused on
Authors
Eric L. Geist
Overview of the ARkStorm scenario
The U.S. Geological Survey, Multi Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP) uses hazards science to improve resiliency of communities to natural disasters including earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, landslides, floods and coastal erosion. The project engages emergency planners, businesses, universities, government agencies, and others in preparing for major natural disasters. The project also helps to
Authors
Keith Porter, Anne Wein, Charles N. Alpers, Allan Baez, Patrick L. Barnard, James Carter, Alessandra Corsi, James Costner, Dale Cox, Tapash Das, Mike Dettinger, James Done, Charles Eadie, Marcia Eymann, Justin Ferris, Prasad Gunturi, Mimi Hughes, Robert Jarrett, Laurie Johnson, Hanh Dam Le-Griffin, David Mitchell, Suzette Morman, Paul Neiman, Anna Olsen, Suzanne Perry, Geoffrey Plumlee, Martin Ralph, David Reynolds, Adam Rose, Kathleen Schaefer, Julie Serakos, William Siembieda, Jonathan D. Stock, David Strong, Ian Sue Wing, Alex Tang, Pete Thomas, Ken Topping, Chris Wills, Lucile Jones
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Earthquake Hazards Program, Science Application for Risk Reduction, Geologic Hazards Science Center, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Big Sur Landslides, Reducing Risk, San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary
Chapter 50 Geology and tectonic development of the Amerasia and Canada Basins, Arctic Ocean
Amerasia Basin is the product of two phases of counterclockwise rotational opening about a pole in the lower Mackenzie Valley of NW Canada. Phase 1 opening brought ocean–continent transition crust (serpentinized peridotite?) to near the seafloor of the proto-Amerasia Basin, created detachment on the Eskimo Lakes Fault Zone of the Canadian Arctic margin and thinned the continental crust between the
Authors
Arthur Grantz, Patrick E. Hart, Vicki A Childers
New insights of tsunami hazard from the 2011 Tohoku-oki event
We report initial results from our recent field survey documenting the inundation and resultant deposits of the 2011 Tohoku-oki tsunami from Sendai Plain, Japan. The tsunami inundated up to 4.5 km inland but the > 0.5 cm-thick sand deposit extended only 2.8 km (62% of the inundation distance). The deposit however continued as a mud layer to the inundation limit. The mud deposit contained high conc
Authors
K. Goto, C. Chague-Goff, S. Fujino, J. Goff, Bruce Jaffe, Y. Nishimura, Bruce M. Richmond, D. Sugawara, Witold Szczucinski, D.R. Tappin, Robert C. Witter, E. Yulianto
Observations of coarse sediment movements on the mixed beach of the Elwha Delta, Washington
Mixed beaches, with poorly sorted grains of multiple sizes, are a common and globally distributed shoreline type. Despite this, rates and mechanisms of sediment transport on mixed beaches are poorly understood. A series of tracer deployments using native clasts implanted with Radio Frequency Identifier (RFID) tags was used to develop a better understanding of sediment transport directions and magn
Authors
I.M. Miller, Jonathan Warrick, C. Morgan
Hydrodynamics of a bathymetrically complex fringing coral reef embayment: Wave climate, in situ observations, and wave prediction
This paper examines the relationship between offshore wave climate and nearshore waves and currents at Hanalei Bay, Hawaii, an exposed bay fringed with coral reefs. Analysis of both offshore in situ data and numerical hindcasts identify the predominance of two wave conditions: a mode associated with local trade winds and an episodic pattern associated with distant source long-period swells. Analys
Authors
R. Hoeke, C. Storlazzi, P. Ridd
Recent storm and tsunami coarse-clast deposit characteristics, southeast Hawai'i
Deposits formed by extreme waves can be useful in elucidating the type and characteristics of the depositional event. The study area on the southeast coast of the island of Hawaiʻi is characterized by the presence of geologically young basalts of known age that are mantled by recent wave-derived sedimentary deposits. The area has been impacted by large swells, storms and tsunamis over the last cen
Authors
B. M. Richmond, Sebastian Watt, M. Buckley, B. E. Jaffe, G. Gelfenbaum, R.A. Morton