Publications

The Surf-camera Remote Calibration Tool (SurfRCaT) is a Python-based software application to calibrate and rectify images from pre-existing video cameras that are operating at coastal sites in the United States. The software enables remote camera calibration and subsequent image rectification by facilitating the remote-extraction of ground control points using airborne lidar observations, and guid

Coral reefs are degrading due to many synergistic stressors. Recently there have been a number of global reports of corals occupying mangrove habitats that provide a supportive environment or refugium for corals, sheltering them by reducing stressors such as oxidative light stress and low pH. This study used satellite imagery and manual ground-truthing surveys to search for mangrove-coral habitats

Coastal cliffs constitute 80 percent of the world’s coastline, with seacliffs fronting a large proportion of the U.S. West Coast shoreline, particularly in California. Erosion of coastal cliffs can threaten infrastructure and human life, yet the spatial and temporal scope of cliff studies have been limited by cumbersome traditional methods that rely on the manual interpretation of seacliff feature

Turbidity currents deliver sediment rapidly from the continental shelf to the slope and beyond; and can be triggered by processes such as shelf resuspension during oceanic storms; mass failure of slope deposits due to sediment- and wave-pressure loadings; and localized events that grow into sustained currents via self-amplifying ignition. Because these operate over multiple spatial and temporal sc

Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) offers a collection of water storage and storage options that have been used by resource managers to mitigate the reduced availability of fresh water. One of these technologies is aquifer storage and recovery (ASR), where surface water is treated then recharged into a storage zone within an existing aquifer for later recovery and discharge into a body of water. Durin

Coastal acidification in southeastern U.S. estuaries and coastal waters is influenced by biological activity, run-off from the land, and increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Acidification can negatively impact coastal resources such as shellfish, finfish, and coral reefs, and the communities that rely on them. Organismal responses for species located in the U.S. Southeast document large ne

The marginal marine environments of the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) serve as an ideal natural laboratory to study how oceanographic and climatic variability influence coral-reef ecosystems. Reefs along the Pacific coast of Panamá span a natural gradient of nutrients, pH, and temperature as a result of stronger seasonal upwelling in the Gulf of Panamá relative to the Gulf of Chiriquí. The ecosys

Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry can be used with digital underwater photographs to generate high-resolution bathymetry and orthomosaics with millimeter-to-centimeter scale resolution at relatively low cost. Although these products are useful for assessing species diversity and health, they have additional utility for quantifying benthic community structure, such as coral growth and fine

Since the second half of the 20th century, there has been an increase in scientific interest, research effort, and information gathered on the geologic sedimentary character of the continental margins of the United States. Data and information from thousands of sources have increased our scientific understanding of the character of the margin surface, but rarely have those data been combined and i

A high degree of uncertainty exists for understanding and predicting coastal estuarine response to changing climate, land-use, and sea-level conditions, leaving geologic records as a best-proxy for constraining potential outcomes. With the majority of the world's population focused in coastal regions, understanding how local systems respond to global, regional, and even local pressures is key in d

In an eastern-Pacific coral assemblage at Devil’s Crown, Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, two coral species, Psammocora stellata and Cycloseris (Diaseris) distorta, form dense populations of unattached colonies on sand and rubble substrata. In the Galápagos, living C. (D.) distorta is found only at this single site, whereas populations of P. stellata are found throughout the archipelago. Six cores dati

Anthropogenic environmental change has increased coral reef disturbance regimes in recent decades, altering the structure and function of many coral reefs globally. In this study, we used coral community survey data collected from 1996 to 2015 to evaluate coral calcification capacity (CCC) dynamics with respect to recorded pulse disturbances for 121 reef sites in the Main Hawaiian Islands and Mo'o