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Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

2022 Annual Report

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Mapping methane reduction potential of tidal wetland restoration in the United States

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Opportunities to improve alignment with the FAIR Principles for U.S. Geological Survey data

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Scientific literature and information products produced by Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center staff

Featured Journal Article

Herring River, Wellfleet, MA

Calibrating optical turbidity measurements with suspended-sediment concentrations from the Herring River in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, from November 2018 to November 2019

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Featured USGS Series

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Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center—2022 Annual Report.  The 2022 annual report highlights accomplishments, includes a list of publications, and summarizes the work of the center and each of the science groups.

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Sound Waves

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Coastal and Marine Research News from Across the USGS

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Filter Total Items: 1691

Transient coastal landscapes: Rising sea level threatens salt marshes

Salt marshes are important coastal environments that provide key ecological services. As sea level rise has accelerated globally, concerns about the ability of salt marshes to survive submergence are increasing. Previous estimates of likely survival of salt marshes were based on ratios of sea level rise to marsh platform accretion. Here we took advantage of an unusual, long-term (1979–2015), spati
Authors
Ivan Valiela, Javier Lloret, Tynan Bowyer, Simon Miner, David P. Remsen, Elizabeth Elmstrom, Charlotte Cogswell, E. Robert Thieler
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Environmental controls, emergent scaling, and predictions of greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in coastal salt marshes

Coastal salt marshes play an important role in mitigating global warming by removing atmospheric carbon at a high rate. We investigated the environmental controls and emergent scaling of major greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) in coastal salt marshes by conducting data analytics and empirical modeling. The underlying hypothesis is that the salt marsh GHG fl
Authors
Omar I. Abdul-Aziz, Khandker S. Ishitaq, Jianwu Tang, Serena Moseman-Valtierra, Kevin D. Kroeger, Meagan Gonneea Eagle, Jordan Mora, Kate Morkeski
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

The Santa Cruz Basin submarine landslide complex, southern California: Repeated failure of uplifted basin sediment

The Santa Cruz Basin (SCB) is one of several fault-bounded basins within the California Continental Borderland that has drawn interest over the years for its role in the tectonic evolution of the region, but also because it contains a record of a variety of modes of sedimentary mass transport (i.e., open slope vs. canyon-confined systems). Here, we present a suite of new high-resolution marine geo

Authors
Daniel S. Brothers, Katherine L. Maier, Jared W. Kluesner, James E. Conrad, Jason Chaytor
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center , Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Impact of pore fluid chemistry on fine-grained sediment fabric and compressibility

Fines, defined here as grains or particles, less than 75 μm in diameter, exist nearly ubiquitously in natural sediment, even those classified as coarse. Macroscopic sediment properties, such as compressibility, which relates applied effective stress to the resulting sediment deformation, depend on the fabric of fines. Unlike coarse grains, fines have sizes and masses small enough to be more strong
Authors
Junbong Jang, Shuang C. Cao, Laura A. Stern, Jongwon Jung, William F. Waite
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Characterizing the sponge grounds of Grays Canyon, Washington, USA

Deep-sea sponge grounds are relatively understudied ecosystems that may provide key habitats for a large number of fish and invertebrates including commercial species. Glass sponge grounds have been discovered from the tropics to polar regions but there are only a few places with high densities of dictyonine sponges. Dictyonine glass sponges have a fused skeleton, which stays intact when they die
Authors
Abby N. Powell, M. Elizabeth Clarke, Erica Fruh, Jason Chaytor, Henry M. Reiswig, Curt E. Whitmire
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Reductive dechlorination rates of 4,4′-DDE (1-chloro-4-[2,2-dichloro-1-(4-chlorophenyl)ethenyl]benzene) in sediments of the Palos Verdes Shelf, CA

Wastes from the world's largest manufacturer of DDT (1-chloro-4-[2,2,2-trichloro-1-(4-chlorophenyl)ethyl]benzene) were released into the Los Angeles County municipal sewer system from 1947 to 1971. Following primary treatment, the effluent was discharged through a submarine outfall system whereupon a portion of the DDT and associated degradation products were deposited in sediments of the Palos Ve
Authors
Robert P. Eganhouse, Christopher R. Sherwood, James Pontolillo, Brian Edwards, Patrick J. Dickhudt
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Seagrass impact on sediment exchange between tidal flats and salt Marsh, and the sediment budget of shallow bays

Seagrasses are marine flowering plants that strongly impact their physical and biological surroundings and are therefore frequently referred to as ecological engineers. The effect of seagrasses on coastal bay resilience and sediment transport dynamics is understudied. Here we use six historical maps of seagrass distribution in Barnegat Bay, USA, to investigate the role of these vegetated surfaces
Authors
Carmine Donatelli, Neil Kamal Ganju, Sergio Fagherazzi, Nicoletta Leonardi
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Global and local sources of mercury deposition in coastal New England reconstructed from a multi-proxy, high-resolution, estuarine sediment record

Historical reconstruction of mercury (Hg) accumulation in natural archives, especially lake sediments, has been essential to understanding human perturbation of the global Hg cycle. Here we present a high-resolution chronology of Hg accumulation between 1727 and 1996 in a varved sediment core from the Pettaquamscutt River Estuary (PRE), Rhode Island. Mercury accumulation is examined relative to (1
Authors
William. F Fitzgerald, Daniel R Engstrom, Chad Hammerschmidt, Carl Lamborg, Prentiss Balcom, Ana Lima-Braun, Michael H. Bothner, Christopher M. Reddy
By
Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Canada Basin

Perennial sea-ice cover over much of Canada Basin of the Arctic Ocean has hampered geoscientific studies, but concerted efforts over the past decade– particularly with the use of two ice-breakers working collaboratively – has led to new seismic and sample acquisitions. These studies have revealed extensive non-oceanic basement beneath Canada Basin that coincides with proof of a central spreading a
Authors
David Mosher, Deborah Hutchinson
By
Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Storm impacts on hydrodynamics and suspended-sediment fluxes in a microtidal back-barrier estuary

Recent major storms have piqued interest in understanding the responses of estuarine hydrodynamics and sediment transport to these events. To that end, flow velocity, wave characteristics, and suspended-sediment concentration (SSC) were measured for 11 months at eight locations in Chincoteague Bay, MD/VA, USA, a shallow back-barrier estuary. Daily breezes and episodic storms generated sediment-res
Authors
Daniel J. Nowacki, Neil K. Ganju
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Remotely sensing the morphometrics and dynamics of a cold region dune field using historical aerial photography and airborne LiDAR data

This study uses an airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) survey, historical aerial photography and historical climate data to describe the character and dynamics of the Nogahabara Sand Dunes, a sub-Arctic dune field in interior Alaska’s discontinuous permafrost zone. The Nogahabara Sand Dunes consist of a 43-km2 area of active transverse and barchanoid dunes within a 3200-km2 area of vegeta
Authors
Carson Baughman, Benjamin M. Jones, Karin L. Bodony, Daniel H. Mann, Christopher F. Larsen, Emily A. Himmelstoss, Jeremy Smith
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Alaska Science Center, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Downhole physical property-based description of a gas hydrate petroleum system in NGHP-02 Area C: A channel, levee, fan complex in the Krishna-Godavari Basin offshore eastern India

India’s second National Gas Hydrate Program expedition, NGHP-02, collected logging while drilling and sediment core data in Area C offshore eastern India, to investigate controls on the distribution and peak saturations of methane gas hydrate occurrences in buried channel, levee and fan deposits. Physical property results are presented here for the four Area C coring sites: NGHP-02-07, targeting
Authors
William F. Waite, Junbong Jang, Timothy S. Collett, Ronish Kumar
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Energy Resources Program, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center