Images

Pete Dal Ferro and Andrew Stevens, both from the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center (PCMSC) in Santa Cruz, California, install a Vaisala WXT weather station in Grizzly Bay, east of San Pablo Bay and northeast of San Francisco.

A structure called a dolphin, permanently affixed in the sediment, stands in Grizzly Bay near San Francisco, CA, with a weather station installed on top. The USGS will use the data from the weather station in conjunction with other oceanographic data, in their studies of sediment movement in the bay.

A weather station, installed in the middle of Grizzly Bay east of San Pablo Bay (near San Francisco), gets its power from a small solar panel. Data collected from the station is transmitted via a wireless modem. Far in the background is the city of Benicia, and the plume rising into the sky is water vapor emitted from the Benicia oil refinery.

On PCMSC vessel Jewell, a team of USGS scientists sit in Grizzly Bay, a baylet of San Francisco Bay in Solano County, California. USGS collects sediment samples to study how sediment moves through sensitive coastal environments like this.

Scientists from the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in their vessel jewell, docked at Belden's Landing Water Access Facility on Montezuma Slough. They are preparing for a day of sampling on Grizzly Bay, where they study how sediment moves through sensitive coastal environments.

From left to right, USGS scientists Sam McGill, Lucas WinklerPrins, David Hart, Selina Davila Olivera, and Pete Dal Ferro work on Grizzly Bay on the vessel Jewell, to collect sediment samples using the GOMEX box corer.

USGS science crew works to free the muddy sediment from a GOMEX box corer. They are on board the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center's vessel Jewell on Grizzly Bay in the San Francisco Bay area.

Digital elevation model (DEM) of northern San Francisco Bay, California, created using bathymetry data collected between 1999 and 2016 (MLLW)

The U.S. west coast is an area of complex coastal geography. This photograph depicts several examples of geological features along the California coastline that are shaped by varied coastal processes. The gently sloping beach, stark bluffs, and presence of smooth rocks suggests that the coastal processes shaping this coastline are complex.

This region of the California coastline is lined with coastal bluffs that have been shaped not only by runoff from rain, but also by wave- and wind-driven erosion. This photo from Pescadero State Beach displays an example of a bluff undergoing erosional processes. Water from the ocean, delivered in waves, can overtop some of these coastal bluffs.

Patrick Barnard explains how the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) integrates information from the Hazards Exposure Reporting and Analytics (HERA) mapper to understand the social and economic consequences of different flooding scenarios. 

Rigorously Valuing the Role of Florida’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Rigorously Valuing the Role of American Samoa’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Rigorously Valuing the Role of Guam’s Coral Reefs and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Map displaying the distribution of total economic losses (direct building damages and indirect economic disruption) in the U.S. that are prevented from flooding by coral reefs annually. In total, the annual coastal flooding risk reduction benefits provided by U.S. coral reefs exceed $1.8 billion.

Rigorously Valuing the Role of Hawaiʻi’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Rigorously Valuing the Role of the U.S. Virgin Islands’ Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Rigorously Valuing the Role of Puerto Rico’s Coral Reefs in Coastal Hazard Risk Reduction

Estimated Annual Benefits

Photographs showing equipment used during bathymetric and topographic surveys along the Columbia River littoral cell, Washington and Oregon.

Image map of study area showing (a) study region, (b) study sites, (c, d) example orthomosaic images, and (e) photo of SET 1.

Multibeam bathymetry shown in the spectrum from red (shallower) to blue (deeper) for depths greater than 200 m across the head of Astoria Canyon. The land and continental shelf are shown in grayscale slope shading where darker colors represent steeper slopes.  The modern Columbia River is far right.