Images

Bull elk in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

Looking out the mouth of Reynolds Glacier in Glacier National Park. Glacier National Park is iconic of the combined impacts of climate change and snow and ice loss – over 80 percent of the park’s glaciers have been lost since the mid-19th century.

Red huckleberry bushes in fall in Glacier National Park

An American pika sits on a talus slope.  

A hay pile gathered by an American pika sits on a talus slope.  During summer pikas collect green mountain plants to make hay piles for winter food.

Ripe huckleberries in the Custer Gallatin NF

An American pika collects grass and flowers to stockpile its winter food supplies.

Ripe huckleberries in hand

USGS scientist Blake Hossack demonstrates swabbing the skin of a boreal toad to detect the amphibian chytrid fungus, to the Conservation Ecology class from the University of Montana.

Sampling for invasive northern pike in south central Alaska.

Grinnell Glacier 2013 

An oil/brine spill in the Williston Basin.

Invasive New Zealand mud snails as seen under a microscope.

USGS Aquatic Entomologist Joe Giersch stands at the outlet of Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National park, the main locality the western glacier stonefly (Zapada glacier).

When looking for a place to set up a capture location, biologists look for existing bear sign such as scratches on trees and bear scat.  Sometimes traps are set in areas that have no obvious bear sign to determine if indeed bears are present.

Scientists sample for alpine insects in streams like this near Blackfoot Glacier in Glacier National Park. Alpine streams environments in the northern Rocky Mountains are especially vulnerable to climate change due to rapid warming resulting in loss of glaciers and snowpack.

Pronghorn amidst the sagebrush-grassland interface in the Centennial Valley, Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, southern Montana in 2013.

A glacier stonefly (Zapada glacier) on a snowy backdrop in Glacier National Park. The species is threatened by climate warming induced glacier and snow loss and has been petitioned for protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act due to climate-change-induced habitat loss.

A floating surface collector in the Swift Reservoir on the North Fork Lewis River, WA. A floating surface collector attracts and collects juvenile fish before they pass through a dam so they can be held for transport past the dam via barge or truck. 

A primary spawning stream near Mount St. Helens, Washington for federally threatened bull trout.