Harmful algal blooms, or HABs, occur when colonies of algae - simple plants that live in the sea and freshwater - grow out of control and produce toxic or harmful effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine mammals and birds. The human illnesses caused by HABs, though rare, can be debilitating or even fatal. Ranging from microscopic, single-celled organisms to large seaweeds, algae are simple plants that form the base of food webs. Sometimes, however, their roles are more sinister.

The U.S. Gulf of Mexico Coast...provides a valuable setting to study deeply connected natural and human interactions and feedbacks that have led to a complex, interconnected coastal system. The physical landscape in the region has changed significantly due to broad-scale, long-term processes such as coastal subsidence and river sediment deposition, as well as short-term episodic events such as hurricanes. Modifications from human activities, including building levees and canals and constructing buildings and roads, have left their own imprint on the natural landscape. ...

In this talk, Dr. Kate Moran, Chief Executive Officer at ONC, introduced greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect, explained climate forcing, compared Earth's ancient climate with today's, and discussed ways humanity can both mitigate and adapt to climate change.

In this lesson, students examine an article about a tiny island community off the Louisiana Coast and discuss how it is being affected by the changing ecosystem.

Coastal zones constitute one of the most heavily populated and developed land zones in the world. Despite the utility and economic benefits that coasts provide, there is no reliable global-scale assessment of historical shoreline change trends. Here, via the use of freely available optical satellite images captured since 1984, in conjunction with sophisticated image interrogation and analysis methods, we present a global-scale assessment of the occurrence of sandy beaches and rates of shoreline change therein...

Seagrass certainly doesn't get the interest and protection it deserves. That's why we've created this officially endorsed Ocean Decade Toolkit providing key facts, imagery and other tools needed to help create awareness and inspire action.

This series of web pages introduces climate science in a sequence that illustrates different aspects of the climate system. Natural and human influences on climate are presented here, as well as the effects of interactions between parts of Earth's systems. Special emphasis is placed on the methods that scientists use to study the climate and make predictions about future impacts, as this is a topic that is sometimes misunderstood. The overarching Guiding Principle states that humans can take actions to reduce climate change and its impacts, which is a key part of teaching climate science.

On average, a football field of land disappears into the Gulf of Mexico every 100 minutes. Over thousands of years, the Mississippi River carried sediment to the Louisiana coastline, building up marshes, wetlands and new land. But today, because of canals and levees that constrict and confine the path of the river, the sediment cannot reach the delta to replenish the eroding wetlands. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost close to 2,000 square miles of wetlands, an area roughly the size of Delaware.

Nitrogen and phosphorus are essential nutrients - yet too much of a good thing is not always a good thing. Scientists are investigating nutrient pollution down the Mississippi River. Each spring, water flows approximately 2,300 miles down the Mississippi River, beginning its journey at Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way, streams and rivers accumulate nutrients that run off the land and into the waterways, and eventually these nutrients enter the Gulf of Mexico.

Driving is not just an air pollution and climate change problem - turns out, it just might be the largest contributor of microplastics in California coastal waters. That is one of many new findings, released Wednesday, from the most comprehensive study to date on microplastics in California.