Habitat Mapping

USGS researchers are working with partners to assess the health and foraging behavior of Florida manatees in the northern Indian River Lagoon and Banana River, areas that have experienced declining seagrasses due to an extended phytoplankton bloom.

Barrier islands provide numerous invaluable ecosystem goods and services including storm protection and erosion control for the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, salinity regulation in estuaries, carbon sequestration in marshes, recreation, and tourism. These islands are dynamic environments due to their position at the land-sea interface. Storms, wave energy, tides, currents, and relative...

Turbid water conditions make the delineation and characterization of benthic habitats difficult by traditional in situ and remote sensing methods. Consequently, only a small fraction of this valuable resource has been mapped or characterized.

Partnering with the Caddo Lake Institute, the USGS WARC Advanced Applications Team developed a web-based mapping application that visualizes the paddlefish tracking observations being collected by FWS.

While the historic focus of vegetation condition is the bulk live and dead compositions, these variables provide no information on the structure of vegetation (density and orientation). Canopy structure information is critical for monitoring status and trends, and essential in climate, weather, and ecological studies.

Mapping of Fort A.P Hill utilizes 2-D interpretation of 2013, 1-foot Color Infrared orthorectified imagery, affording greater detail in wetland interpretation and classification.

Chicopit Bay, part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Florida, is a small embayment at the intersection of San Pablo Creek (part of the Intercoastal Waterway) and the St. Johns River. Home to a number of small oyster beds, this area is now being dredged to help eliminate cross currents from the main shipping channel of the St. Johns. WARC researchers collect baseline environmental...

Modeling both potential changes in climate and responses of species and habitats can increase certainty in management decisions by helping managers to understand the range of possible species and habitat responses under different alternative futures. Climate envelope modeling is one type of modeling that can be useful in understanding species and habitat responses to climate change because it...

Dauphin Island, Alabama, is the only barrier island providing protection to much of Alabama's coastal natural resources. Severely impacted by repeated extreme events, like Hurricane Katrina and Deepwater Horizon oil spill, USGS and partners are conducting a joint study to evaluate the feasibility of certain alternatives to increase resiliency and sustainability of the island.

USGS aims to integrate biological and hydrological models to help develop management tools to deal with the projected ecological consequences of rising sea level in coastal south Florida.

Remote sensing helps USGS scientists detect and map surface oil in coastal environments.

With the help of remote sensing, USGS maps the progression of marsh dieback along the Louisiana coast.