Images

The YellowScan Navigator Bathymetric Lidar Scanner awaits preflight checks near the South Platte River, Denver, CO.

In January 2024, Joe Adams of the USGS National Uncrewed Systems Office led an A-454 aviation training course at the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, Colorado.

Geologist Michael Frothingham observes strongly deformed rocks of a Proterozoic shear zone in the Medicine Bow Mountains (Wyoming, USA).

View to the west across Death Valley (California, USA) to the Panamint Mountains. Alluvial fans (foreground) and the salt lake playa of the Badwater basin (middle ground) occupy the basin floor.

Photomigrograph (cross-polarized light) showing branching bunches of calcite filaments grown from algal mats in spring-discharge tufas of Cold Creek Spring (Las Vegas region, Nevada, USA). 

Research Geologist A. Kate Souders samples fluvial sandstones of the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation (eastern Nevada, USA). 

Research Geologist A. Kate Souders investigates complexly deformed, middle Cenozoic volcaniclastic rocks of the Death Valley region (California, USA).

Research Geologist Marieke Dechesne describes fluvial deposits of the Paleocene Raton Formation (Raton Basin, Colorado, USA). 

The moon sets over an exposure of the Great Unconformity within the Colorado National Monument (Colorado, USA). At this location, Paleoproterozoic granite (foreground) is unconformably overlain by the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation.

Sunset view across Little Molas Lake, an alpine glacial lake on the west side of the Animas River Valley (San Juan Mountains, Colorado, USA).

The flat-lying rhyolite of Cropsy Mountain overlies the hydrothermally altered Summitville Andesite (San Juan Mountains, Colorado, USA). 

Research Geologist Theresa Schwartz takes field notes about the Cenozoic sedimentary rocks of Bat Mountain (Death Valley region, California, USA).

Intermountain West Project members Adam Hudson and Michael Frothingham, in collaboration with National Park Service archaeologist Patrick Fristoe, inspect gravel deposits and associated geologic hazards along the Hines Creek fault system, Denali National Park (Alaska, USA).

In an effort to better understand the effects of abandoned mine lands on natural resources, Research Geologists Margaret Berry and Adam Hudson collect samples of ancestral Animas River sediment for geochemical analysis (Durango, Colorado, USA).

Research Geologist Amy Gilmer walks over carbonate rocks of the Upper Triassic Star Peak Group (northern Humboldt Range, Nevada, USA).

Research Geologist Marieke Dechesne investigates heavy mineral-bearing shoreface deposits in the Upper Cretaceous Trinidad Sandstone (Raton Basin, New Mexico, USA).

Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) grow on middle Cenozoic sedimentary rocks of the Las Vegas region (southern Nevada, USA).  

Intermountain West Project members Adam Hudson and Michael Frothingham inspect young aeolian deposits of the San Juan River corridor (Bluff, Utah, USA). 

Intermountain West Project members discuss an outcrop of the Oligocene-Miocene Troublesome Formation (near Kremmling, Colorado, USA).

Vivid red, orange, and yellow colors highlight hydrothermally altered rocks on East Red Mountain in the Grizzly Peak caldera (Sawatch Range, Colorado, USA).

Research Geologist Theresa Schwartz walks over Cenozoic sedimentary rocks in Death Valley National Park (California, USA).