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Coastal erosion, exacerbated by sea-level rise, threatens both infrastructure and natural areas around the world.

Public lands across the West contain myriad Native American cultural sites that often include surficial stone features such as rings, alignments, and cairns.

During late summer and autumn, Pacific walruses are resting on shore north of the Bering Strait more often and in larger numbers in both the United States and Russia.  Historically, walruses rested primarily on floating sea ice over their offshore foraging grounds in this region, but climate warming has reduced availability of sea ice.  With greater numbers of walruses gathering on shore, USGS scientists an

Mule deer are known to avoid human disturbances, including energy infrastructure and development. By combining remote sensing data, GIS modeling, and information on energy expenditure of mule deer, researchers developed a spatiotemporal model to map the minimum energy expenditure required for mule deer to traverse a landscape with increasing levels of oil and gas development on the northern Colorado Plateau.

The USGS, in collaboration with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the

California’s oceanic waters provide habitat for numerous migratory, resident, and breeding species of seabirds and marine mammals. Recent technological advances have made offshore wind energy infrastructure development a possibility for the deep waters off the U.S. West Coast.

Approximately 2 billion people are expected to experience diminished water supplies because of seasonal snowpack decline this century.  Over the last 50 years, particularly in some regions of the western U.S., declines in annual snowpack levels have contributed to reduced streamflow levels, a trend supported by both models and in situ observations (USGS,

USGS researchers in the Water Resources Mission Area are partnering with NASA and the University of Southern California (USC) to measure stream surface velocity using a spectrum of sensors and edge-computing tools carried on Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS).

The National Map Corps (TNMCorps), a crowdsourced mapping project, relies on volunteers to assist the

Ecologists and natural resource managers have used historical aerial photography to analyze long-term vegetation changes in a wide range of ecosystems. In national park units like Lassen Volcanic National Park, historical aerial photographs can provide baseline information for a wide range of geophysical and ecological studies, such as geomorphology changes, post-fire regeneration, and tree/shrub encroachment.