california

Interactive map of coastal flooding impacts from sea level rise

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Impacts data viewer provides a preliminary look at how different amounts of sea level rise would affect coastal flooding in the United States.
 
In addition to overall flooding estimates, users can see the relative social vulnerability of coastal regions; areas currently already subject to coastal flooding; impacts on marshes; and the different levels of confidence with which predictions can be made in different areas.
 

EARTH: The Most Dangerous Fault in America

When people think of dangerous faults in America, the the San Andreas probably comes to mind first. But another potentially greater threat lurks in the East Bay region of Northern California, just a stone's throw from San Francisco and the tech hub of Silicon Valley: the Hayward Fault. In the June issue, EARTH Magazine guest author Steven Newton lays out just what is at risk, and what to expect when an earthquake strikes on what may be the most dangerous fault in America.

Offshore Energy

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Background:

Offshore energy is a huge and growing resource:

  • About 18 percent of U.S. oil and natural gas is produced offshore and production is growing. Globally, the offshore provides 30 percent of oil and natural gas.
  • Offshore wind is also a growing source of electricity, especially in Europe. The U.S. has significant offshore wind power potential, but no commercial wind facilities are in development [2017 update: the first offshore wind project in the United States went live in December 2016 off the coast of Rhode Island].

Ongoing technological advancements assure all these resources will continue to grow while addressing heightened environmental concerns.

Our speakers are:

Webinar Co-Sponsors:

American Association of Petroleum Geologists, American Geophysical Union, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Consortium for Ocean Leadership, Geological Society of America

Resources to learn more:

Search the Geological Surveys Database for reports and factsheets about offshore energy.

Advances in Earth Science - Offshore Energy - Historical Perspective

Interactive map of the chemistry and mineralogy of soils in the United States

The U.S. Geological Survey provides geochemical and mineralogical maps for the conterminous United States, based on sampling data with a spatial resolution of 1 sample per 1,600 square km, for a total of 4857 sites across the country. The resulting interactive maps allow users to see regional variations in soil chemistry at different depths in the soil.
 

Visualization of earthquake risk in California

In 2015. the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities - a collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey, the California Geological Survey, and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) - released the Third California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF3). A visualization was produced to accompany this release, showing the progress of fault modelling in California and the updated earthquake likelihood map.

EARTH: Protracted Drought Threatens California Levees

We're most accustomed to flooding causing levees to fail, like they did in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. So although the El Nino-induced floods are making the most news in California right now, it's not actually the floods that are threatening some California levees the most. Instead it's the severe drought over the last four years that has taken its toll on thousands of kilometers of century-old earthen levees.

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