Images

A free-drifting sturgeon embryo was captured in the Lower Missouri River in late August.  Most sturgeon in the lower Missouri River spawn in the springtime. 

WOlf River near Landon, MS; Mack Moss measuring overflow during Harricane Issac.

Algae near the shore of Poplar Island-a 3-mile-long (4.8-kilometer-long) island located on the Chesapeake Bay, part of Talbot County, Maryland.

A U.S. Geological Survey technician collects elevation data using a real time kinematic GPS at Bandon National Wildlife Refuge.

This photograph is of the seafloor off the Massachusetts coast and shows a sea anemone amongst gravel and cobbles. This photograph was collected as part of USGS research in collaboration with the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management to support development of the Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan and management of the state's waters.

This photograph is of the seafloor off the Massachusetts coast and shows a lobster, sponges and brachiopods on cobbles and ledge covered with seaweed, bubblegum algae and red filamentous algae.

This photograph is of the seafloor off the Massachusetts coast and shows sand dollars and shell fragments on a sandy seabed. This photograph was collected as part of USGS research in collaboration with the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management to support development of the Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan and management of the state's waters.

This photograph is of the seafloor off the Massachusetts coast and shows sand dollars and a few shell fragments on a sandy seabed. This photograph was collected as part of USGS research in collaboration with the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management to support development of the Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan and management of the state's waters.

A tree had fallen into the Marsh River near Shelly, Minnesota, and a new shoot took off right over the river.

This photograph is of the seafloor off the Massachusetts coast and shows a lobster on a sandy seabed. This photograph was collected as part of USGS research in collaboration with the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management to support development of the Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan and management of the state's waters.

Owyhee River near Rome, OR; Alvin Sablan streamgaging.

USGS Geologist Robert Witter documenting tsunami scour features near Stardust Bay, Alaska. Conditions in the Aleutian Islands can be wet and windy for days on end.

Location: Stardust Bay, Sedanka Island, Alaska

An outcrop composed of six tsunami deposits on the inland side of the lowland backing Stardust Bay over 0.5 miles from the sea. Brown soils developed into the top of each sand sheet and black tephra (air fall volcanic ash) layers between two of the sand deposits aided correlation of the six sand sheets across the study area.

Three geologists scramble down a hillside on Sedanka Island that overlooks Stardust Bay. The geologists documented driftlogs stranded at elevations up to 60 ft above sea level and over 0.5 mile inland.

Cave in fractured Austin Group rock located approximately 9.3 miles northeast of city of Uvalde in Uvalde County, Texas. Photograph taken August 7, 2012, by Robert R. Morris.

SIR 2013–5149

In this image, a Gunnison prairie dog eats a bait laden with the sylvatic plague vaccine. Prairie dogs in the wild are less likely to succumb to plague after they ingest peanut-butter-flavored bait that contains a vaccine against the disease.

Geologist takes field notes to document the discovery of a 30-foot long driftlog stranded more than 0.5 mi inland at Stardust Bay on the remote Alaskan island of Sedanka. The log, stranded at an elevation of more than 60 feet above sea level, was carried inland and deposited in 1957 by a large tsunami generated by the magnitude 8.6 Andreanof Islands earthquake.

USGS scientist Thierry Work takes a sample from diseased coral at Tunnels Reef on the north shore of Kauai, Hawaii

On a ridge behind Stardust Bay at an elevation of 46 feet above sea level, a shallow pit reveals five sand sheets deposited by tsunamis in the past 1700 years.

Location: Stardust Bay, Sendanka Island, Alaska

Aphanizomenon is a common bloom-forming cyanobacteria, AKA, blue-green algae.  Many strains produce saxitoxin and cylindrospermopsin.

A western white pine (Pinus monticola) in Kings Canyon National Park, Calif., towers over USGS ecologist Nathan Stephenson.