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Scientific reports, journal articles, and information products produced by USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center scientists.
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Filter Total Items: 1331
Fluvial-aeolian interactions in sediment routing and sedimentary signal buffering: an example from the Indus Basin and Thar Desert
Sediment production and its subsequent preservation in the marine stratigraphic record offshore of large rivers are linked by complex sediment-transfer systems. To interpret the stratigraphic record it is critical to understand how environmental signals transfer from sedimentary source regions to depositional sinks, and in particular to understand the role of buffering in obscuring climatic or tec
Authors
Amy E. East, Peter D. Clift, Andrew Carter, Anwar Alizai, Sam VanLaningham
Age, growth rates, and paleoclimate studies of deep sea corals
Deep-water corals are some of the slowest growing, longest-lived skeletal accreting marine organisms. These habitat-forming species support diverse faunal assemblages that include commercially and ecologically important organisms. Therefore, effective management and conservation strategies for deep-sea corals can be informed by precise and accurate age, growth rate, and lifespan characteristics fo
Authors
Nancy G Prouty, E. Brendan Roark, Allen Andrews, Laura Robinson, Tessa Hill, Owen Sherwood, Branwen Williams, Thomas P. Guilderson, Stewart Fallon
Bacterial dominance in subseafloor sediments characterized by methane hydrates
The degradation of organic carbon in subseafloor sediments on continental margins contributes to the largest reservoir of methane on Earth. Sediments in the Andaman Sea are composed of ~ 1% marine-derived organic carbon and biogenic methane is present. Our objective was to determine microbial abundance and diversity in sediments that transition the gas hydrate occurrence zone (GHOZ) in the Andaman
Authors
Brandon R. Briggs, Fumio Inagaki, Yuki Morono, Taiki Futagami, Carme Huguet, Antoni Rosell-Mele, T.D. Lorenson, Frederick S. Colwell
California State Waters Map Series — Offshore of Tomales Point, California
In 2007, the California Ocean Protection Council initiated the California Seafloor Mapping Program (CSMP), designed to create a comprehensive seafloor map of high-resolution bathymetry, marine benthic habitats, and geology within the 3-nautical-mile limit of California’s State Waters. The CSMP approach is to create highly detailed seafloor maps through collection, integration, interpretation, and
Authors
Samuel Y. Johnson, Peter Dartnell, Nadine E. Golden, Stephen R. Hartwell, H. Gary Greene, Mercedes D. Erdey, Guy R. Cochrane, Janet Tilden Watt, Rikk G. Kvitek, Michael W. Manson, Charles A. Endris, Bryan E. Dieter, Lisa M. Krigsman, Ray W. Sliter, Erik N. Lowe, John L. Chinn
California State Waters Map Series — Drakes Bay and vicinity, California
In 2007, the California Ocean Protection Council initiated the California Seafloor Mapping Program (CSMP), designed to create a comprehensive seafloor map of high-resolution bathymetry, marine benthic habitats, and geology within the 3-nautical-mile limit of California’s State Waters. The CSMP approach is to create highly detailed seafloor maps through collection, integration, interpretation, and
Authors
Janet Watt, Peter Dartnell, Nadine E. Golden, H. Gary Greene, Mercedes D. Erdey, Guy R. Cochrane, Samuel Y. Johnson, Stephen R. Hartwell, Rikk G. Kvitek, Michael W. Manson, Charles A. Endris, Bryan E. Dieter, Ray W. Sliter, Lisa M. Krigsman, Erik N. Lowe, John L. Chinn
California State Waters Map Series — Offshore of San Francisco, California
In 2007, the California Ocean Protection Council initiated the California Seafloor Mapping Program (CSMP), designed to create a comprehensive seafloor map of high-resolution bathymetry, marine benthic habitats, and geology within California’s State Waters. The CSMP approach is to create highly detailed seafloor maps through collection, integration, interpretation, and visualization of swath sonar
Authors
Guy R. Cochrane, Samuel Y. Johnson, Peter Dartnell, H. Gary Greene, Mercedes D. Erdey, Nadine E. Golden, Stephen R. Hartwell, Charles A. Endris, Michael W. Manson, Ray W. Sliter, Rikk G. Kvitek, Janet Tilden Watt, Stephanie L. Ross, Terry R. Bruns
Projection of wave conditions in response to climate change: A community approach to global and regional wave downscaling
Future changes in wind-wave climate have broad implications for coastal geomorphology and management. General circulation models (GCM) are now routinely used for assessing climatological parameters, but generally do not provide parameterizations of ocean wind-waves. To fill this information gap, a growing number of studies use GCM outputs to independently downscale wave conditions to global and re
Authors
Li H. Erikson, M. Hemer, Piero Lionello, Fernando J. Mendez, Nobuhito Mori, Alvaro Semedo, Xiaolan Wang, Judith Wolf
A nonlinear, implicit one-line model to predict long-term shoreline change
We present the formulation, validation, and application of a nonlinear, implicit one-line model to simulate long-term (decadal and longer) shoreline change. The purpose of the implicit numerical method presented here is to allow large time steps without sacrificing model stability compared to explicit approaches, and thereby improve computational efficiency. The model uses a Jacobian-free Newton-K
Authors
Sean Vitousek, Patrick L. Barnard
Critical metals in manganese nodules from the Cook Islands EEZ, abundances and distributions
The Cook Islands (CIs) Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) encompasses 1,977,000 km2 and includes the Penrhyn and Samoa basins abyssal plains where manganese nodules flourish due to the availability of prolific nucleus material, slow sedimentation rates, and strong bottom currents. A group of CIs nodules was analyzed for mineralogical and chemical composition, which include many critical metals not befo
Authors
James R. Hein, Francesca Spinardi, Nobuyuki Okamoto, Kira Mizell, Darryl Thorburn, Akuila Tawake
Great (≥Mw8.0) megathrust earthquakes and the subduction of excess sediment and bathymetrically smooth seafloor
Using older and in part flawed data, Ruff (1989) suggested that thick sediment entering the subduction zone (SZ) smooths and strengthens the trench-parallel distribution of interplate coupling. This circumstance was conjectured to favor rupture continuation and the generation of high-magnitude (≥Mw8.0) interplate thrust (IPT) earthquakes. Using larger and more accurate compilations of sediment thi
Authors
David W. Scholl, Stephe H. Kirby, Roland E. von Huene, Holly F. Ryan, Ray E. Wells, Eric L. Geist
Large-scale dam removal on the Elwha River, Washington, USA: river channel and floodplain geomorphic change
A substantial increase in fluvial sediment supply relative to transport capacity causes complex, large-magnitude changes in river and floodplain morphology downstream. Although sedimentary and geomorphic responses to sediment pulses are a fundamental part of landscape evolution, few opportunities exist to quantify those processes over field scales. We investigated the downstream effects of sedimen
Authors
Amy E. East, George R. Pess, Jennifer A. Bountry, Christopher S. Magirl, Andrew C. Ritchie, Joshua B. Logan, Timothy J. Randle, Mark C. Mastin, Justin Toby Minear, Jeffrey J. Duda, Martin C. Liermann, Michael L. McHenry, Timothy J. Beechie, Patrick B. Shafroth
Large-scale dam removal on the Elwha River, Washington, USA: coastal geomorphic change
Two dams on the Elwha River, Washington State, USA trapped over 20 million m3 of mud, sand, and gravel since 1927, reducing downstream sediment fluxes and contributing to erosion of the river's coastal delta. The removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, initiated in September 2011, induced massive increases in river sediment supply and provided an unprecedented opportunity to examine the geomo
Authors
Guy R. Gelfenbaum, Andrew W. Stevens, Ian M. Miller, Jonathan A. Warrick, Andrea S. Ogston, Emily Eidam