Images

Storm clouds moving in over the park.

Data storage tags (DST) implanted in telemetered pallid sturgeon record the water temperture and fish depth at pre-programed time intervals. 

Study chamber containing a pregnant pocketbook mussel (Lampsilis cardium) exposed to an elevated water temperature of 32 degrees Celsius. This mussel is showing signs of stress--lying on top of the substrate and unable to burrow.

USGS Oregon Water Science Center research vessel, used for lower Columbia River estuary water quality/contaminant and aquatic ecosystem health.

Engineered Log Jam on the lower river opposite the new Lower Klallam Tribe Fish Hatchery.

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe project creates salmon habitat on the lower Elwha River in preparation for dam removal and habitat restoration.

Newly hatched pallid sturgeon propagated at the Columbia Environmental Research Center.

USGS Diver Reg Reisenbichler observing a Fish Eating anemone.
 

The USGS National Wildlife Health Center conducts a bat autopsy as part of its efforts to study the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome in bats.

A Washington Department of Ecology scientist maps the bathymetry of the mouth of the Elwha River using an integrated GPS and echo sounder on a personal watercraft. 

USGS microbiology technician evaluates a bacterial assay to determine the cause of a wildlife mortality. The USGS National Wildlife Health Center works to identify, track, and prevent wildlife disease.

Female pallid sturgeon, PLS11-007, is released back into the Missouri River after an ultrasound evaluation of her reproductive condition. 

Sunrise reflecting on a November morning on the Sacramento River, California.

Agricultural fields and an abandoned farmstead in eastern Montana in the Great Plains region. The Great Plains region of the United States has experienced significant land-use change since European settlement, with vast swaths of grasslands converted to agricultural lands.

Mikhail Malin, visiting IBIW scientist, prepares to lowers a hydroacoustic transducer into the water from a CERC research vessel below Bagnell Dam on the Osage River, Missouri.  The CERC and IBIW collaborated with the Missouri Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Missouri to assess the distribution of paddlefish below the dam us

Beau Griffith, a biological technician at CERC, stands at the bottom of one of the newly reconstructed ponds designed to conduct long-term studies with sturgeon and other riverine species.  A divider and circulators can be installed in the sandy-bottomed ponds to create the continuous water current that sturgeon prefer.

U.S. Geological Survey participiated in a flyover of the Devils Lake Basin to view continued severe flooding.

Interior of room 40 inside the tarpaper shacks on the USGS Menlo Park campus, circa 1965. During the early 1960s, three of the key scientists working on the theory of magnetic reversals operated in the Rock Magnetics Laboratory that was housed in these shacks. The Rock Magnetics Laboratory was designated a National Historic Landmark on October 12, 1994.

USA-National Phenology Network citizen-scientist Lucille Tower records the one millionth observation on maple vine in the large nature database.

A USGS herpetologist with a Sonora Mud Turtle (Kinosternon sonoriense; photo left) and Red-eared Slider (Trachemys scripta elegans;
photo right) at Montezuma Well, Montezuma Castle National Monument.

Damage to a house in Louisa County, Virginia, after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake on August 23, 2011.

The Spinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt are pictured here.