Images

Photo of the Camp Manito-wish YMCA boat house on Lake Boulder, Wis.

Photo of Laboratory for Infectious Diseases and the Environment (LIDE).

Completed installation of test plots: permeable pavers (foreground), permeable concrete (midground), and permeable asphalt (background).

A USGS scientist crouches over a  seaplane float and collects a water sample from Turquoise Lake in Alaska.

Illustration created by Ben Siebers, USGS scientist, for journal article "Human and bovine viruses and bacteria at three Great Lakes beaches: Environmental variable associations and health risk".

Arsenic speciation analyses of groundwater samples using ARSOlux biosensor technology. Pictured (left to right), Dr. Mindy Erickson, US Geological Survey; Andreas Koelsch, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research; Emily Berquist, Minnesota Department of Health.

Example fluorescence amplification curves from a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analysis. By reviewing the fluorescence amplification curves, the concentration of the pathogen in the original sample can be back-calculated from the amount and number of cycles needed to reach the target concentration.

Joel Stokdyk, LIDE Biologist, prepares a sample for quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analysis. qPCR uses fluorescence to quantify the detection of nucleic acids from a targeted pathogen.

Sediment core retrieval from Lake Erie onboard the RV Lake Guardian on Lake Erie, Michigan.

Chloride concentrations in these studied northern U.S.

Both irrigation wells and municipal wells affect water levels in the Little Plover River, Wisconsin. 

USGS scientist collecting an Equal width increment (EWI) sample on Bark River, Merton, WI.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists collecting a groundwater sample from a well at the USGS Bemidji Crude-Oil Spill Research Site, Minnesota. The scientists monitored in real time the dissolved oxygen, pH, specific conductance, and temperature of the water as the well is pumped so they can know when to collect representative sample.

A pair of snowshoes rests in the snow next to a small streamgage mounted on a wooden frame, with antenna and solar panel. A black tube connected to the gage enters a hole in the snow in the foreground.

Streamgage 05124982 Filson Creek IN Swse Sec. 24, Near Winton, Minnesota

Cement-lined channels such as this one in a section of the Kinnickinnic River at 11th Street in Milwaukee are slowly being removed in stream rehabilitation efforts. Water chemistry remains important, and this channel shows abundant algal growth from excess nutrients and abundant sunlight.

Research Hydrologist Isabelle Cozzarelli holds a sediment core collected from a contaminated aquifer at the Bemidji National Crude Oil Spill Fate and Natural Attenuation Research Site. The sediment from the core is analyzed and used to measure iron, arsenic, and trace metals in the solid phase.

2012 SPARROW Models for the Midwest: Total Phosphorus, Total Nitrogen, Suspended Sediment, and Streamflow

An example stream reach of Underwood Creek’s concrete lined channel before rehabilitation in 2012.

Monitoring wells near the location of a 1979 oil spill at the National Crude Oil Spill Fate and Natural Attenuation Research Site near Bemidji, Minnesota, in October 2010. Some are for sampling groundwater, some are for sampling soil gas, some are for sampling oil. The green PVC collar in the foreground is for measuring soil carbon dioxide (CO2) efflux.

Measuring soil CO2 efflux at the Bemidji Crude Oil Spill research site