Images

Photograph from a mounted time-lapse camera looking eastward along Barter Island’s north shore document how the coastal bluffs and beach changed during a single summer. The photograph shows a late-summer extreme storm with waves crashing into the bluff (September 3, 2014).

Seismic Lab aboard R/V Marcus G. Langseth

Timeline of past drilling activities conducted by countries, private sector firms, government agencies, and academe that have helped to refine global gas hydrate estimates and possible future drilling and production testing

Airgun array aboard R/V Marcus G. Langseth

Schematic showing the general setting of seeps on the US Atlantic margin and related processes, such as gas hydrate degradation, groundwater seepage, leakage through fractured rocks, or emissions from the seafloor overlying salt diapirs. Pockmarks shown in white, and the nominal updip limit of gas hydrate stability is represented by the dashed black line.

Sample preparation and processing area in the K.O. Emery Geotechnical Wing at the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center, Woods Hole, MA

Three Arctica islandica shells that have been washed and set out to dry.                                     

Photograph from a mounted time-lapse camera looking eastward along Barter Island’s north shore document how the coastal bluffs and beach changed during a single summer. The photograph shows a summer storm from the west eroding the beach (July 25, 2014).

Marinna Martini prepares to deploy a NIMBBLE from the R/V Connecticut south of Martha's Vineyard

A Sontek IQ ADCP measures depth and velocity of a salt marsh creek (Cape Cod, MA)

The Salt Marsh Observatory at Sage Lot Pond in the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve serves as an important platform for research in coastal salt marshes. Infrastrucutre in this marsh allows researchers to access sites while maintaining habitat and platform health.

Jen Suttles collects water samples from a salt marsh tidal creek (East Falmouth, MA) for laboratory analysis of total organic carbon.  These samples will be compared to data recorded by instrumentation deployed in an adjacent tidal creek as part of research efforts to quantify carbon dynamics in coastal ecosystems

Researchers at the USGS study the long-term change of the beaches and dunes at Fire Island, NY.

 Sara Zeigler (USGS) uses the smartphone data collection app ‘iPlover’ to classify the landscape characteristics in an area immediately surrounding a piping plover nest (here, protected with a black mesh predator exclosure).

USGS scientists are working to model shorebird habitat availability both today and in the future, given processes like sea-level rise, in an effort to support the efficient management of beaches for both people and nesting shorebirds. This photo shows an area on the Rockaway Peninsula where high quality shorebird habitat has been closed off to beach recreation.

The beach-dependent shorebirds project at the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center models current and future habitat availability for nesting shorebirds in an effort to map current and likely future habitat availability on a range of sites along the U.S. Atlantic coast.

Polar bear climbing onto the sea ice after a swim in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. USGS photograph taken June 15, 2014.

Polar bear lying on the sea ice to dry off after a swim in the Chukchi Sea, Alaska. USGS photograph taken June 15, 2014.

Photo from a time-lapse camera looking eastward along the north shore of Barter Island on Alaska’s Arctic coast, June 15, 2014. View the complete time-lapse sequence to see how the coastal bluffs and beach changed during a single summer.

USGS researchers collect repeat geophysical data from the nearshore at Fire Island, NY to study bathymetric change over time.