Publications
The Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program publications are listed here. Search by topics and by year.
Filter Total Items: 1918
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulations of reef surf zone processes driven by plunging irregular waves
As waves interact with the slopes of coral reefs and other steep bathymetry profiles, plunging breaking usually occurs where the free surface overturns and violent water motion is triggered. Resolving these surf zone processes pose significant challenges for conventional mesh-based hydrodynamic models, due to the rapidly-deforming nature of the free surface and associated flows. Yet the accurate p
Authors
Ryan J. Lowe, C. Altomare, Mark L. Buckley, Renan F. da Silva, Jeff E. Hansen, Dirk P. Rijnsdorp, J.M. Domínguez, A.J.C. Crespo
Combining tangential flow filtration and size fractionation of mesocosm water as a method for the investigation of waterborne coral diseases
The causative agents of most coral diseases today remain unknown, complicating disease response and restoration efforts. Pathogen identifications can be hampered by complex microbial communities naturally associated with corals and seawater, which create complicating “background noise” that can potentially obscure a pathogen’s signal. Here, we outline an approach to investigate waterborne coral di
Authors
James S. Evans, Valerie J. Paul, Blake Ushijima, Christina A. Kellogg
Mature diffuse tectonic block boundary revealed by the 2020 southwestern Puerto Rico seismic sequence
Distributed faulting typically tends to coalesce into one or a few faults with repeated deformation. The progression of clustered medium-sized (≥Mw4.5) earthquakes during the 2020 seismic sequence in southwestern Puerto Rico (SWPR), modeling shoreline subsidence from InSAR, and sub-seafloor mapping by high-resolution seismic reflection profiles, suggest that the 2020 SWPR seismic sequence was dist
Authors
Uri S. ten Brink, L Vanacore, E. J. Fielding, Jason Chaytor, A.M. Lopez-Venegas, Wayne E. Baldwin, David S. Foster, Brian D. Andrews
Shoaling wave shape estimates from field observations and derived bedload sediment rates
The shoaling transformation from generally linear deep-water waves to asymmetric shallow-water waves modifies wave shapes and causes near-bed orbital velocities to become asymmetrical, contributing to net sediment transport. In this work, we used two methods to estimate the asymmetric wave shape from data at three sites. The first method converted wave measurements made at the surface to idealized
Authors
Tarandeep S. Kalra, Steven E. Suttles, Christopher R. Sherwood, John C. Warner, Alfredo Aretxabaleta, Gibson Robert Scott Leavitt
How much marsh restoration is enough to deliver wave attenuation coastal protection benefits?
As coastal communities grow more vulnerable to sea-level rise and increased storminess, communities have turned to nature-based solutions to bolster coastal resilience and protection. Marshes have significant wave attenuation properties and can play an important role in coastal protection for many communities. Many restoration projects seek to maximize this ecosystem service but how much marsh res
Authors
Katherine A. Castagno, Neil K. Ganju, Michael W. Beck, Alison Bowden, Steven B. Scyphers
Human-in-the-Loop segmentation of earth surface imagery
Segmentation, or the classification of pixels (grid cells) in imagery, is ubiquitously applied in the natural sciences. Manual methods are often prohibitively time-consuming, especially those images consisting of small objects and/or significant spatial heterogeneity of colors or textures. Labeling complicated regions of transition that in Earth surface imagery are represented by collections of mi
Authors
Daniel D. Buscombe, Evan B. Goldstein, Christopher R. Sherwood, Cameron S Bodine, Jenna A. Brown, Jaycee Favela, Sharon Fitzpatrick, Christine J. Kranenburg, Jin-Si R. Over, Andrew C. Ritchie, Jonathan Warrick, Phillipe Alan Wernette
Thermodynamic insights into the production of methane hydrate reservoirs from depressurization of pressure cores
We present results of slow (multiple day) depressurization experiments of pressure cores recovered from Green Canyon Block 955 in the northern Gulf of Mexico during The University of Texas at Austin Hydrate Pressure Coring Expedition (UT-GOM2-1). These stepwise depressurization experiments monitored the pressure and temperature within the core storage chamber during each pressure step, or “shut-in
Authors
Stephen C. Phillips, Peter B. Flemings, Kehua You, William F. Waite
Action plan for restoration of coral reef coastal protection services: Case study example and workbook
This report was prepared by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Office of Research and Development, as part of the Air, Climate and Energy (ACE) research program, with support from Tetra Tech, Inc., and in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and The Nature Conservancy. The ACE research program provides scientific informa
Authors
Catherine A. Courtney, Jordon M. West, Curt Storlazzi, T. Shay Viehman, Richard Czaplinski, Erin Hague, Elizabeth C. Shaver
The potential of wave energy conversion to mitigate coastal erosion from hurricanes
Wave energy conversion technologies have recently attracted more attention as part of global efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy resources. While ocean waves can provide renewable energy, they can also be destructive to coastal areas that are often densely populated and vulnerable to coastal erosion. There have been a variety of efforts to mitigate the impacts of wave- and storm-
Authors
Cigdem Ozkan, Talea Mayo, Davina Passeri
The Coastal Imaging Research Network (CIRN)
The Coastal Imaging Research Network (CIRN) is an international group of researchers who exploit signatures of phenomena in imagery of coastal, estuarine, and riverine environments. CIRN participants develop and implement new coastal imaging methodologies. The research objective of the group is to use imagery to gain a better fundamental understanding of the processes shaping those environments. C
Authors
Margaret Louise Palmsten, Katherine L. Brodie
Primary deposition and early diagenetic effects on the high saturation accumulation of gas hydrate in a silt dominated reservoir in the Gulf of Mexico
On continental margins, high saturation gas hydrate systems (>60% pore volume) are common in canyon and channel environments within the gas hydrate stability zone, where reservoirs are dominated by coarse-grained, high porosity sand deposits. Recent studies, including the results presented here, suggest that rapidly deposited, silt-dominated channel-levee environments can also host high saturation
Authors
Joel E. Johnson, Douglas R. MacLeod, Stephen C. Phillips, Marcie Phillips Purkey, David L. Divins
U.S. Atlantic margin gas hydrates
The minimum distribution of gas hydrates on the U.S. Atlantic margin is from offshore South Carolina northward to the longitude of Shallop Canyon on the southern New England margin. Few wells have logged or sampled the gas hydrate zone on this margin, meaning that the presence of gas hydrates is inferred primarily based on seismic data that reveal bottom simulating reflections, mostly at water dep
Authors
Carolyn D. Ruppel, William Shedd, Nathaniel C. Miller, Jared W. Kluesner, Matthew Frye, Deborah Hutchinson