Environmental Science

Beach Closures

February 6, 2019

Hundreds of beaches nationwide are closed each year due to the presence of potentially harmful bacteria, viruses, and parasites in the water.

Sea Ice

The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy moves through pancake ice in the Arctic's Chukchi Sea.

Sea ice is frozen seawater floating on the surface of the ocean. Sea ice is formed entirely in the ocean, unlike icebergs, which originate from land-based sources like glaciers and ice sheets.

Glaciers are large ice masses created by snowfall that has transformed into ice and compressed over the course of many years. An ice sheet is a mass of glacial land ice extending more than 20,000 square miles.

Arctic Ocean Circulation

The complex ocean circulation system in the Arctic — which impacts the entire food web — is in a delicate balance.

Marine Protected Areas

Marine protected areas refers to any part of the ocean that receives some level of protection under law, protecting about one percent of the global ocean.

Seafloor Mining

The ocean contains a complex combination of processes that sometimes result in commercially viable forms of a wide range of minerals.

Corals

Many people think of coral as hard, rock-like formations that attract abundant, diverse marine life. In fact, corals are tiny marine animals called polyps that live together in colonies.

Currents, Gyres, & Eddies

At the surface and beneath, currents, gyres and eddies physically shape the coasts and ocean bottom.

Ocean Acidification

Ocean acidification is a reduction in the pH of the ocean over an extended period of time, caused primarily by an increase of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Biogeochemistry

Biogeochemistry studies the cycles of crucial elements, such as carbon and nitrogen, and their interactions with other substances and organisms as they move through Earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere.

Carbon Cycle

Carbon is the building block of life on Earth and has a powerful impact on the planet’s climate.

Earthquakes

An earthquake is a shaking of the ground that occurs when two large blocks of Earth's crust slip suddenly past one another.

Changing Shorelines & Erosion

Waves, currents, wind, storms, and tides form complex interactions over time to cause erosion along some stretches of shoreline and growth in others.

Coastal Ecosystems

The narrow region where land and ocean meet includes salt marshes, mangroves, wetlands, estuaries, reefs, and bays often linked in a network of physical, chemical, and biological interchanges.

Coastal Science

Although the oceans cover most of Earth, the tiny sliver of the coastal ocean greatly influences, and is most influenced by, human activity.

Paleoclimatology

Understanding how climate naturally varied over thousands and millions of years teaches us how Earth's climate system works and sheds light on current, human-induced changes.