Images

The USGS National Wildlife Health Center works to identify, track, and prevent wildlife disease. A USGS technician works with a prairie dog as part of the center's efforts to protect prairie dogs, and in turn the endangered black-footed ferret, from plague.

Researchers from the USGS National Wildlife Health Center examine a duck as part of part of efforts to identify, track, and prevent wildlife disease.

Dr. David Shelly is a research seismologist with the USGS.

A small slough in Suisun Slough in the Suisun Bay, California.

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory uses a variety of ground- and satellite-based techniques to monitor Hawai‘i’s active volcanoes.  Here, an HVO scientist sets up a portable GPS receiver to track surface changes during an island-wide survey of Hawai‘i’s volcanoes.

In the drier Arizona upland plant communities, pictured here, some species will likely decline with forecasted climate change (such as foothill paloverde, ocotillo and creosote bush) while cacti may well increase in abundance and range.

USGS scientist Peter Van Metre examines a parking lot where coal-tar sealcoat has been applied.

To present the most information in a single view of Jupiter's moon, Io, a global color mosaic, derived from Galileo color images, was superposed on a higher resolution image mosaic, derived from merging the best resolution images from spacecrafts Galileo and Voyager 1.

The May 12, 2008, Great Sichuan Earthquake, also called the Wenchuan Earthquake, occurred at 14:28 local time, in Sichuan Province, China. The earthquake magnitudes were Mw = 7.9 (USGS), Ms = 8.0 (Chinese Earthquake Administration). The epicenter was 80 km west-northwest of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province.

An endangered Hawaiian hoary bat, a species that is sometimes killed by wind turbines.

The Black Noddy (with a chick) is one of eight seabird species whose population density was studied on the French Frigate Shoals' Tern Island by biologists with the USGS Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center's Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Climate Change Project. 

USGS geophysicist Anjana Shah stands next to a Cessna Grand Caravan airplane that took measurements over Virginia's Louisa, Goochland and Fluvanna counties. The data collected will help USGS scientists locate buried geologic features associated with the August 23, 2011 earthquake and its aftershocks. Surveys were conducted from 7/15- 7/25.

An example of a deforested slope in the Cayaguas watershed, eastern Puerto Rico. Such areas are more susceptible to landslides.

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

Photos from Dauphin Island indicate beach erosion and island overwash, furthering the erosion the island has seen during repeated storm events -- Ivan, Katrina, Gustav and Isaac -- that have led to the island's increased vulnerability to future storms.  

USGS researcher Craig Allen stands on the edge of Mesa Alta, amid diverse forest and woodland in the uplands of northern New Mexico; note some recently dead ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir in the field of view. Forest drought stress is strongly correlated with tree mortality from poor growth, bark beetle outbreaks, and high-severity fire.

Mikhail Kanevsiy (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) holding a core of ice-rich permafrost from about 2m depth. 

USGS Aquatic Ecologist Ted Kennedy sampling invertebrate and organic drift at Lees Ferry during the November 19, 2012 HFE.

USGS staff Kyrie Fry and Scott Vanderkooi as well as BOR Employees Katrina Grantz, Mary Barger, and Glen Knowles look down at Beaver Creek Rapid.

USGS scientists up on the cable way at Lees Ferry measuring suspended-sediment transport.

USGS's Arizona Water Science Center's Dave Anning on cable way at Lees Ferry measuring suspended-sediment transport.