Images

Image of the Platte River taken from a natural color sensor mounted on a UAS

NUSO researchers evaluated use of the T-Hawk UAS equipped with a high-resolution digital camera for mapping the spatial extent and elevation of emergent sandbars along two reaches of the Platte River in July 2013.

Here, scientists point to a mountain pine beetle (top) and a pine beetle larva (bottom) that have been tunneling in the bark of a killed pine tree. The bluish streaks in the bark are from bluestain fungus.

Image taken from a UAS of abandoned materials in the Mojave National Preserve

In cooperation with the National Park Service (NPS) at the Mojave National Preserve, the NUSO flew a UAS mission in March 2013 to locate and survey abandoned solid waste for historical assessment potential and cleanup.

Natural color image of Lake Mills at a dam removal site taken from a UAS

Natural color image of a drainage pond at the Coal Basin Mine taken from a UAS in September 2012 where NUSO, working with the Office of Surface Mining and the Colorado Division of Minerals and Geology, performed a mission to determine if UAS captured video could identify and map abandoned mine land (AML) features, such as portals and other dangerous openings, from a

Fixed wing UAS at the Haleakala National Park in Hawaii in May 2012 where NUSO remote pilots worked with the National Park Service to test UAS’ ability to map invasive plants and inspect fence lines in remote inaccessible areas of the park.

USGS scientist Jeff Sloan hand launching a fixed wing UAS during a 2011 NUSO research mission, in coordination with the Office of Surface Mining, at the Powellton Surface Mine in West Virginia to test the utility of UAS technology for supporting coal mining inspection and oversight.

USGS researcher Jeff Sloan monitoring the flight of a fixed wing UAS during a Pygmy Rabbit Habitat Study in the Idaho Desert between Shoshone and Hailey.

Fixed wing UAS being hand launched from a boat on the Missouri River in August of 2011 when the NUSO worked with the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe (LBST) Environmental Protection Office to evaluate UAS’s ability to safely collect data along dangerous or even inaccessible shoreline.

UAS ground control station at a NUSO August 2011 research mission at the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Montana to determine if the Raven UAS thermal sensors could be used to identify areas of ground water discharge. 

Image of Sandhill cranes roosting site in the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) taken from a natural color camera mounted on a fixed wing UAS.

Remote pilot Mark Bauer (Parallel, Inc. for USGS) preparing to hand launch a fixed wing UAS during an RxCADRE event (Prescribed Fire Combustion and Atmospheric Dynamics Research Experiment) at the Eglin Airforce Base in February 2011. 

The edge of Andrews Meadow, within the Loch Vale watershed in Colorado. Shown is the view to the west of the Continental Divide and Taylor glacier.

A percussion piston coring system is used for >20-m water depth and can obtain up to 20-m of sediment core

USGS scientists work from a securely anchored floating platform used to obtain long sediment cores from remote alpine lakes. 

Research Geologist Lesleigh Anderson prepares a surface lake sediment core for incremental sub-samples in the White River Plateau, Colorado.

View of a portion of J.C. Reed’s (2004) Geologic Map of North America, showing Precambrian bedrock and Paleozoic sedimentary cover in the upper Midwest. At 1:5 million scale, this is the most detailed seamless map of bedrock geology in the United States. Synthesizing nationwide geology in greater detail is a challenge for the coming decade.

A modern packrat (Neotoma cinerea) surrounded by midden material in a cave in northwestern Nevada.

A massive complex Pleistocene packrat midden (in the alcove in the center of the image) in a cave in eastern Nevada.