While this term is used differently across the country, on the West Coast a slough is referred to as a swamp or shallow lake system, usually a backwater to a larger body of water. Slough is typically ...

Global winds drag on the water’s surface, causing it to move and build up in the direction that the wind is blowing. And just as the Coriolis effect deflects winds to the right in the Northern ...

The last ice age occurred just 16,000 years ago, when great sheets of ice covered much of Earth's Northern Hemisphere. Though the ice melted long ago, the land once under and around the ice is still ...

The ability to link maps digitally to information enables us to visualize and understand patterns and relationships around us. Geographic information systems, or GIS, provides this link. GIS is a ...

Aerial view of Pensacola, Florida collected by NOAA aircraft on October 11, 2026. The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is collecting aerial damage assessment images of coastal areas in the aftermath of ...

The U.S. Ocean Enterprise, a thriving ecosystem of businesses connected to ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes monitoring, generates approximately $16.4 billion in revenue annually, according to NOAA's ...

Kelvin waves are difficult to see with the naked eye as they are large in scale, slow moving and don't break onshore like typical ocean waves. In this graphic, satellite radar altimetry measurements ...

Sea ice is frozen water that forms, expands, and melts in the ocean. It is different from icebergs, glaciers, ice sheets, and ice shelves, which originate on land. For the most part, sea ice expands ...

These stumps are evidence that trees once grew here, but due to a constantly changing shoreline, they are now mostly submerged in the ocean. Maritime forests are shoreline estuaries that grow along ...

An installed marsh organ at the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve in the Florida Panhandle. A NOS-sponsored project in the Gulf of America employs the marsh organ to mimic sea level ...

Coral reefs are created by hard, or stony, coral. Soft corals don’t form reefs, but are often found on reefs, adding essential structural complexity to the entire reef ecosystem. Coral reefs begin to ...