Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center investigated the sedimentary and geochemical properties of the lower reaches of the Pascagoula River along the Mississippi coast of the Gulf of Mexico by collecting estuarine, riverine and marsh sediments. This was done in order to increase understanding of the region's environmental history, describe the long-term (millennial-scale) depositional history, and identify sedimentary intervals associated with extreme marine intrusions. To this end, the group obtained long sediment cores, shovel-dug sediment slabs and marsh and riverine channel/estuarine surface samples from a north-south transect along the river edge from the low-salinity bottomland hardwood forest through the Mississippi Sound, during field work conducted in September 2014. Additional surface samples were collected during September, 2015.