Images

Screen capture of Grand Canyon shaded relief base map used by the USGS's Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.

The Little Colorado River in Grand Canyon, with researchers in the distance during a humpback chub monitoring trip. Photo by Maria Dzul, USGS, July 2016.

The Little Colorado River winds through Grand Canyon. Photo by Maria Dzul, USGS, July 2016.

Researchers hike near the Little Colorado River to a humpback chub monitoring site. Photo by Maria Dzul, USGS, July 2016.

Researchers process data near the Little Colorado River during a humpback chub monitoring trip. Photo by Maria Dzul, July 2016.

The Little Colorado River in Grand Canyon. Photo by Maria Dzul, USGS, July 2016. 

The Little Colorado River near Grand Canyon. Photo by Lucas Bair, USGS, Southwest Biological Science Center.

Monitoring riparian vegetation along the Colorado River downstream of Glen Canyon Dam

Humpback chub, a federally protected species, in habitat near the confluence of the Colorado River and Little Colorado Rivers in Grand Canyon. Photo by David Ward, USGS.

USGS Research Ecologist Jeff Lovich gets ready to release a male desert tortoise into its cave-like shelter in southern Joshua Tree National Park after collecting data. Photo by Shellie Puffer, USGS, SBSC.

River channel mapping boats on a sandbar beach on the Colorado River, in Grand Canyon, 2016. USGS photo, public domain.

A USGS repeat photograph that is a pseudo-match to an E.C. LaRue USGS image from 1923, taken during the Birdseye Expedition, prior to Glen Canyon Dam construction upstream of this site on the Colorado River.

A USGS repeat photograph that is a match to an E.C. LaRue USGS image from 1923, taken during the Birdseye Expedition, prior to Glen Canyon Dam construction upstream of this site on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon.

Field technicians taking root data on dryland plant species on the Colorado Plateau. 

A Kelp Crab (Pugettia producta) captured in a beach seine during a 2012 Bainbridge Island larval forage fish survey.  This survey focused on the abundance, habitat use, and food habits of larval forage fish (surf smelt and sand lance) and was conducted by scientists from the Columbia River Research Laboratory -Western Fisheries Research Center.

Ecosystems are changing at a rapid pace. It can be difficult to determine if a landscape is in need of restoration. In this photo of the spring wildflower bloom in the Sonoran desert, an invasive annual grass, Bromus rubens (red brome), is pervasive. Land managers have to make decisions about when, where, and how to intervene in a system.

Snow-capped peaks of the La Sal Mountain Range as seen from the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park. This is one area in the Southwest where biocrust plays an important role. 

Hydropeaking creates a bottleneck for aquatic insects. Insect eggs laid along a rivers edge become dessicated when exposed to the air during low flows. Figure originally published in Bioscience; Kennedy et al. 2016.

During the fall bats can be seen emerging from under the causeway at Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area near Sacramento, CA. Photo by Erika Sanchez-Chopitea, Western Geographic Science Center, USGS.

Aerial view showing the intense greenup of restoration plots in the lower Colorado River Delta following the 2014 Minute 319 pulse flow.

Salt-encrusted remains of a southwestern pond turtle (Actinemys pallida) as found in the dry lake bed of Elizabeth Lake, Los Angeles County, California. Note the heavy coating of evaporites on the carcass. Most living turtles collected in 2014 had similar but varying degrees of coatings on the head, limbs and shell.