Images

A Saildrone Explorer being towed on Lake Erie at the beginning of a mission to collect data to improve fishery surveys in July 2023.

A Saildrone Explorer in the harbor being towed out onto Lake Erie for the beginning of a mission to collect data to improve fishery surveys on July 14, 2023.

A Saildrone Explorer being towed through the harbor in Erie, PA at the beginning of a mission to collect data to improve fishery surveys in July 2023.

A Saildrone Explorer being towed in the harbor in Erie, PA at the beginning of a mission to collect data to improve fishery surveys in July 2023.

A Saildrone Explorer in the harbor before its launch on Lake Erie for the beginning of a mission to collect data to improve fishery surveys in July 2023.

A Saildrone Explorer being towed on Lake Erie at the beginning of a mission to collect data to improve fishery surveys in July 2023.

A Saildrone Explorer being towed through the harbor in Erie, PA at the beginning of a mission to collect data to improve fishery surveys in July 2023.

Sara Weaver, a USGS hydrologic technician, manually measures the water level of Otter Creek in Center Rutland, Vermont, July 12, 2023. USGS image. 

The USGS provides science to understand, protect, restore, and solve problems in the world around us, and that includes interconnected communities of living things called ecosystems. 

Image of a preliminary topobathymetric digital elevation model captured of the of the Santiam River, OR. 

Federal, state, local and University of Hawai´i leaders and students celebrate the creation of a new facility that will monitor volcanoes and support conservation science.

Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, presented with lei by David Phillips, Deputy Scientist-in-Charge of the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, during a ceremony to celebrate the creation of a new facility that will monitor volcanoes and support conservation science.

Bats roosting in a bat box during NABat Fieldwork in 2023. 

Andrea Schuhmann examines an acoustic bat recording using a software for bat call analysis during NA Bat Fieldwork in 2023.

Ben Lohre and Andrea Schuhmann test acoustic microphones prior to bat surveys, as part of the 2023 NABat field season.

EARTHQUAKES: WHAT YOU FEEL

EARTHQUAKE INTENSITY

Molly Huber holds out a freshly cut root cookie in Pennsylvania. Root cookies help scientists study stream bank erosion.

Smoke filled the skies over western Canada and even much of the United States in May 2023. The source was several wildfires in Alberta and British Columbia.

Near the end of May, rain and cooler temperatures finally brought some relief for the out-of-control fires.

Topobathymetric digital elevation model of the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.

Map of the Potomac River topobathymetric lidar survey area in Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia.

About 35 million years ago a meteoroid 2-3 miles wide swooped through the Earth's atmosphere and blasted an enormous crater into the continental shelf in what’s modern-day Virginia.