USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program
News Archive - stories from December 2013.
On December 17, the USGS issued a press release describing a new website devoted to help understand coastal changes occurring at Fire Island, NY. USGS Geologist Cheryl Hapke has been instrumental in not only providing basic scientific research for the barrier islands off Long Island, but also participating in the policy and environmental decision process following Hurricane Sandy. "The website is intended to provide federal, state and local partners and stakeholders with an access point to the large body of science we have produced," Hapke said.
Read the USGS Press Release.posted: 2013-12-18
A new resource about Fire Island, N.Y. is now at the fingertips of coastal managers, planners and the public that will be useful for understanding and predicting future change on the island.
The USGS created the public website that details a decade's worth of research that focuses on changes to the beaches and dunes of the barrier island and understanding what affects their change.
Fire Island was severely impacted by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. More than a year later, the USGS continues to study the changes left behind in its devastating path and generating critical information to aid the recovery process and help communities become more resilient against future storms.
Read the USGS Press Release.posted: 2013-12-17
‘Sand wars’ come to New England coast. As weather worsens, New England’s sea levels are rising fast — as are the stakes.
Sand is becoming New England coastal dwellers’ most coveted and controversial commodity as they try to fortify beaches against rising seas and severe erosion caused by violent storms.
Read the full article in the Boston Globeposted: 2013-12-16
On December 5, 2013, USGS Geologist Christopher Reich presented findings from a 2010 research project in a talk titled "New Geologic Discovery at the Florida Middle Ground." The presentation was given to the general public at the Weedon Island Preserve Cultural and Natural History Center in St. Petersburg and hosted by Libby Carnahan, who works for the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Science Florida Sea Grant program. Libby was a member of the dive team that collected the cores. The coring took place August 1-7, 2010 and required 6 teams of divers to pull off this daunting task. This was the first time anyone had successfully taken cores in the Florida Middle Ground (FMG), which is located 120 miles northwest of Tampa Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. The unique geologic structure has had many researchers curious about its development and geologic composition since it was first discovered in the early 1900s.
Our findings changed the long-standing theory that the FMG had developed as a coral reef. Four cores were drilled during the week. No coral material was found in any of the rock samples. We found that the FMG ridges range in water depths from 86ft to >180ft with some dramatic ledges. Rather than corals, the walls consist of a thick sequence of muddy sands that are capped by Vermetid gastropods (marine snails).
For detailed information on the findings of the research project you can find the journal article at http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/SI63-005.1
For more information about the Weedon Island Preserve visit their website at http://weedonislandpreserve.org/posted: 2013-12-12
On Friday, December 6, Cheryl Hapke (USGS) will speak to the Long Island Natural History Conference at 10 am for a 45-minute talk, "Coastal Response to Hurricane Sandy at Fire Island, NY." The conference is being held in the Berkner Auditorium of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY. Cheryl's talk, the lead talk listed in the program, will be about the profound morphologic changes to the beach and dune system at Fire Island before and after the storm and will also explore the long term (decade to century) behavior of the system and regional geology.posted: 2013-12-05