Publications

In July and September of 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) conducted geophysical surveys to investigate the geologic controls on island framework from Ship Island to Horn Island, MS, for the Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM) Ecosystem Change and Hazard Susceptibility project. This project is also part of a broader USGS study on Coastal Change and Transport (CCT). This report serves as an archiv

Porosity is the state of being porous, as measured by the percentage of bulk volume of a rock or soil that is occupied by space, whether isolated or connected. In hydrocarbon-bearing limestone settings, subsurface porous strata containing the oil or gas usually underlie non-porous caprock through which hydrocarbons cannot pass. In settings, subsurface freshwater aquifers beneath caprock can become

Every year, billions of tons of fine particles are eroded from the surface of the Sahara Desert and the Sahel of West Africa, lifted into the atmosphere by convective storms, and transported thousands of kilometers downwind. Most of the dust is carried west to the Americas and the Caribbean in the Saharan Air Layer (SAL). Dust air masses predominately impact northern South America during the North

The U.S. Geological Survey established a sediment trap in the northern Gulf of Mexico to collect time-series data on the flux and assemblage composition of live planktic foraminifers. This report provides an update of the 2008 time-series data to include results from 2009. Ten species, or varieties, of planktic foraminifers constitute >90 percent of the assemblage: Globigerinoides ruber (pink and

Alina Reef is one of several thousand patch reefs that lie across the shallow carbonate platform seaward of Hawk Channel off the northern Florida Keys. The site is near the northern latitudinal fringe of the late Holocene western Atlantic coral reef distribution (Figure 1). The area is covered by calcareous sand and discontinuous Thalassia testudinum seagrass meadows and is studded with numerous s

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Spores of Bacillus subtilis were exposed to a series of stratosphere simulations. In total, five distinct treatments measured the effect of reduced pressure, low temperature, high desiccation, and intense ultraviolet (UV) irradiation on stratosphereisolated and ground-isolated B. subtilis strains. Environmental conditions were based on springtime data from a mid-latitude region of the lower strato

Competition between corals and macroalgae is often assumed to occur on reefs, especially those that have undergone shifts from coral to algal dominance; however, data examining these competitive interactions, especially during the early life-history stages of corals, are scarce. We conducted a series of field and outdoor seawater-table experiments to test the hypothesis that allelopathy (chemical

Gorgonians make up the majority of corals in the Aleutian archipelago and provide critical fish habitat in areas of economically important fisheries. The microbial ecology of the deep-sea gorgonian corals Paragorgea arborea, Plumarella superba, and Cryogorgia koolsae was examined with culture-based and 16S rRNA gene-based techniques. Six coral colonies (two per species) were collected. Samples fro

The metabolism of Cayo Enrique Reef, Puerto Rico, was studied using in situ methods during March 2009. Benthic O2 fluxes were used to calculate net community production using both the boundary layer gradient and enclosure techniques. The boundary layer O2 gradient and the drag coefficients were used to calculate productivity ranging from −12.3 to 13.7 mmol O2 m−2 h−1. Productivity measurements fro