Coastal

The USGS is collaborating with the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) to develop post-restoration barrier island habitat maps for three of the four components associated with the Louisiana Outer Coast Restoration Project

USGS researchers will will survey elevation and vegetation in wetlands and vegetated dunes on Horn, Petite Bois, and Ship Islands; Correct the best available lidar-based digital elevation model; estimate inundation for the Gulf Islands National Seashore under various water levels and relative sea-level rise scenarios; and quantify and predict potential marsh migration for the Gulf Islands National...

The USGS will establish Rod Surface Elevation Tables at five National Wildlife Refuges on the Texas coast. This work will support climate adaptation and resilience planning by identifying areas susceptible to loss and degradation due to sea-level rise and extreme climatic events along the Texas Gulf Coast.

USGS researchers are examining germination of Purple Loosestrife to determine if the seed bank can reestablish this invasive species in the Mississippi Delta.

USGS will install and maintain up to six rod surface-elevation table (RSET) rods and paired accretion monitoring stations at the location of the Maurepas Swamp Alternative-2 Mitigation Project.

Researchers are investigating beach compaction, the incubation environment for turtle nests, and shorebird nest abundance at beaches throughout the southeastern United States to better understand the impacts of beach compaction to nesting turtles and foraging seabirds.

The USGS is collaborating with researchers from other agencies, academia, and industry to predict coastal impacts from hurricanes. The results from this study will better inform coastal morphological change models, which will lead to improved hurricane impact projections.

Researchers at WARC will use data and models to produce probabilistic maps of current and future wetland inundation, coastal wetland extent, and coastal and wetland trangression.

The USGS is participating in the Louisiana-Trustee Implementation Group Monitoring and Adaptive Management work group to assess the injuries caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to select the appropriate restoration measures to compensate the public for the injury to coastal and marine resources.

In the summer of 2021, instrumented platforms were deployed at Seven Mile Island Living Laboratory, New Jersey to conduct time series measurements of tidal velocity, turbidity, surface elevation, sediment concentration, and suspended sediment characteristics. The collected data will be used to provide decision support to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as they plan dredging activities in the Gulf...

WARC researchers partnered with managers and species experts to develop a Bayesian network model and a geospatial habitat characteristics dataset to predict the number of breeding pairs of Black Skimmer and Gull-billed Tern along the northern Gulf of Mexico.

WARC Researchers are comparing tree and root growth, soil CO2 flux, and surface elevation change between fertilized and unfertilized mangrove forests to assess the potential impact of increased nutrient loading and to help rate mangrove stand vulnerability.