Publications
Scientific reports, journal articles, and information products produced by USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center scientists.
Filter Total Items: 1339
Variability of the internal tide on the southern Monterey Bay continental shelf and associated bottom boundary layer sediment transport
A 6-month deployment of instrumentation from April to October 2012 in 90 m water depth near the outer edge of the mid-shelf mud belt in southern Monterey Bay, California, reveals the importance regional upwelling on water column density structure, potentially accounting for the majority of the variability in internal tidal energy flux across the shelf. Observations consisted of time-series measure
Authors
Kurt J. Rosenberger, Curt D. Storlazzi, Olivia Cheriton
What a drag: Quantifying the global impact of chronic bottom trawling on continental shelf sediment
Continental shelves worldwide are subject to intense bottom trawling that causes sediment to be resuspended. The widely used traditional concepts of modern sedimentary transport systems on the shelf rely only on estimates for naturally driven sediment resuspension such as through storm waves, bottom currents, and gravity-driven flows but they overlook a critical anthropogenic factor. The strong in
Authors
Ferdinand K. J. Oberle, Curt D. Storlazzi, Till J.J. Hanebuth
Vertical deformation associated with normal fault systems evolved over coseismic, postseismic, and multiseismic periods
Vertical deformation of extensional provinces varies significantly and in seemingly contradictory ways. Sparse but robust geodetic, seismic, and geologic observations in the Basin and Range province of the western United States indicate that immediately after an earthquake, vertical change primarily occurs as subsidence of the normal fault hanging wall. A few decades later, a ±100 km wide zone is
Authors
George A. Thompson, Thomas E. Parsons
Controls on ferromanganese crust composition and reconnaissance resource potential, Ninetyeast Ridge, Indian Ocean
A reconnaissance survey of Fe-Mn crusts from the 5000 km long (~31°S to 10°N) Ninetyeast Ridge (NER) in the Indian Ocean shows their widespread occurrence along the ridge as well as with water depth on the ridge flanks. The crusts are hydrogenetic based in growth rates and discrimination plots. Twenty samples from 12 crusts from 9 locations along the ridge were analyzed for chemical and mineralogi
Authors
James R. Hein, Tracey A. Conrad, Kira Mizell, Virupaxa K. Banakar, Frederick A. Frey, William W. Sager
Seismic attribute detection of faults and fluid pathways within an active strike-slip shear zone: New insights from high-resolution 3D P-Cable™ seismic data along the Hosgri Fault, offshore California
Poststack data conditioning and neural-network seismic attribute workflows are used to detect and visualize faulting and fluid migration pathways within a 13.7 km2 13.7 km2 3D P-Cable™ seismic volume located along the Hosgri Fault Zone offshore central California. The high-resolution 3D volume used in this study was collected in 2012 as part of Pacific Gas and Electric’s Central California Seismic
Authors
Jared W. Kluesner, Daniel S. Brothers
Continental Shelf Morphology and Stratigraphy Offshore San Onofre, CA: The Interplay Between Rates of Eustatic Change and Sediment Supply
New high-resolution CHIRP seismic data acquired offshore San Onofre, southern California reveal that shelf sediment distribution and thickness are primarily controlled by eustatic sea level rise and sediment supply. Throughout the majority of the study region, a prominent abrasion platform and associated shoreline cutoff are observed in the subsurface from ~ 72 to 53 m below present sea level. The
Authors
Shannon Klotsko, Neal W. Driscoll, Graham Kent, Daniel S. Brothers
A submarine landslide source for the devastating 1964 Chenega tsunami, southern Alaska
During the 1964 Great Alaska earthquake (Mw 9.2), several fjords, straits, and bays throughout southern Alaska experienced significant tsunami runup of localized, but unexplained origin. Dangerous Passage is a glacimarine fjord in western Prince William Sound, which experienced a tsunami that devastated the village of Chenega where 23 of 75 inhabitants were lost – the highest relative loss of a
Authors
Daniel S. Brothers, Peter J. Haeussler, Lee Liberty, David Finlayson, Eric L. Geist, Keith A. Labay, Michael Byerly
Impacts of Climate Change on Regulated Streamflow, Hydrologic Extremes, Hydropower Production, and Sediment Discharge in the Skagit River Basin
Previous studies have shown that the impacts of climate change on the hydrologic response of the Skagit River are likely to be substantial under natural (i.e. unregulated) conditions. To assess the combined effects of changing natural flow and dam operations that determine impacts to regulated flow, a new integrated daily-time-step reservoir operations model was constructed for the Skagit River Ba
Authors
Se-Yeun Lee, Alan F. Hamlet, Eric E. Grossman
Combined effects of projected sea level rise, storm surge, and peak river flows on water levels in the Skagit Floodplain
Current understanding of the combined effects of sea level rise (SLR), storm surge, and changes in river flooding on near-coastal environments is very limited. This project uses a suite of numerical models to examine the combined effects of projected future climate change on flooding in the Skagit floodplain and estuary. Statistically and dynamically downscaled global climate model scenarios from
Authors
Josheph J Hamman, Alan F. Hamlet, Roger Fuller, Eric E. Grossman
Manganese nodules
The existence of manganese (Mn) nodules (Figure 1) has been known since the late 1800s when they were collected during the Challenger expedition of 1873–1876. However, it was not until after WWII that nodules were further studied in detail for their ability to adsorb metals from seawater. Many of the early studies did not distinguish Mn nodules from Mn crusts. Economic interest in Mn nodules began
Authors
James R. Hein
Bathymetric terrain model of the Atlantic margin for marine geological investigations
A bathymetric terrain model of the Atlantic margin covering almost 725,000 square kilometers of seafloor from the New England Seamounts in the north to the Blake Basin in the south is compiled from existing multibeam bathymetric data for marine geological investigations. Although other terrain models of the same area are extant, they are produced from either satellite-derived bathymetry at coarse
Authors
Brian D. Andrews, Jason D. Chaytor, Uri S. ten Brink, Daniel S. Brothers, James V. Gardner, Elizabeth A. Lobecker, Brian R. Calder
Reconstructing surface ocean circulation with 129I time series records from corals
The long-lived radionuclide 129I (half-life: 15.7 × 106 yr) is well-known as a useful environmental tracer. At present, the global 129I in surface water is about 1–2 orders of magnitude higher than pre-1960 levels. Since the 1990s, anthropogenic 129I produced from industrial nuclear fuels reprocessing plants has been the primary source of 129I in marine surface waters of the Atlantic and around th
Authors
Ching-Chih Chang, George S. Burr, A. J. Timothy Jull, Joellen L. Russell, Dana Biddulph, Lara White, Nancy G. Prouty, Yue-Gau Chen, Chuan-Chou Shen, Weijian Zhou, Doan Dinh Lam