PREFACE

Sediments off the eastern United States vary markedly in texture - the size, shape, and arrangement of their grains. For descriptive purposes, however, it is typically most useful to classify these sediments according to their grain-size distributions. Starting in 1962, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) began a joint program to study the marine geology of the continental margin off the Atlantic coast of the United States. As part of this program and numerous subsequent projects, thousands of sediment samples were collected and analyzed for grain size.

This report describes the field methods used to collect marine sediment sample, the laboratory methods used to determine and characterize grain-size distributions, and presents these data in several formats that can be readily employed by interested parties. By entering data into usSEABED, a large data compilation and mining program (Reid and others, 2005), this study also responds to an increasing demand for regional information on sea-floor sedimentary character with applications to aggregate resources suitable for beach nourishment and coastal restoration, benthic habitat mapping, and sediment transport studies. To this end, the report is divided into three sections: the first discusses field and laboratory procedures, the second contains the grain-size data, and the third provides a GIS data catalog that lists the available data layers and FGDC-compliant metadata.