Images

Dauphin Island moderate waves weather scenario.

On April 20, 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling platform collapsed and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest oil spills in history. One of the big dilemmas in responding to the oil spil is how to clean up the oil itself. One way currently under research is to use bacteria that naturally break down oil.

You may notice a green, red or brown film on your favorite boating or swimming area in the summer. This coloring could mean that the water is affected by harmful algal blooms. Harmful algal blooms are an accumulation of tiny organisms known as algae and can release harmful toxins into the environment. Pictured here is Binder Lake in Iowa covered in algal blooms.

USGS researchers discovered a new species of turtle. The Pearl River map turtle makes its home in the Pearl River of Louisiana and Mississippi.

Earthquake-triggered landslide on south coast of Haiti near village of Nan Diamant.

Lava burns through thick brush just north of Highway 130, near Kalapana Gardens.

Sampling fish within the intertidal zone of a mangrove forest requires setting a block net at the interface between forest and river at high tide, then retrieving the net at low tide.  Here researchers await high tide to set the nets seen in the boat. 

Turtle in Shenandoah National Park.

Pocosin weather station site, Shenandoah National Park.

Meadows spring weather station site, Shenandoah National Park.

Exposures of sedimentary rocks in the western Brooks Range, Alaska were evaluated for their contents of metals and phosphate and for their petroleum maturation histories to determine the potential for undiscovered resources in the southern National Petroleum Reserve Alaska.

Rim of Kilauea Volcano.

Setting block net across an intertidal rivulet draining a hurricane-derived mudflat.  Net is retrieved at low tide to obtain an estimate of fish catch.  Fish density was found to be greater in waters draining natural tidal forests than in waters from mudflats formed as a result of landfall of a Category 5 hurricane on Cape Sable, Everglades National Park i

Madison river  weather station site, Shenandoah National Park.

Honeycomb weathering of sandstone located on the shores of Puget Sound occurs when expanding salt crystals break fragments of rock, creating a small hole that becomes larger as the process repeats itself over time.

The ochre sea star is a common starfish found along the shores of Puget Sound.  This intertidal dweller feeds primarily on mussels and snails, and may live as long as twenty years.

Eagle was our put-in point for our first synoptic cruise down the Yukon River.

Sunrise on an evapotranspiration-monitoring site in a riparian grassland along the Platte River, Nebraska on September 25, 2007.

Backscattered electron image of radiating fibers of kaolinite growing in volcanic rock altered by fluids connected to hot springs near Lassen Volcanic National Park. Associated with the kaolinite are rounded masses of silica and iron oxides (bright areas) that formed from pyrite. The composition and textures help us evaluate the origin of ore deposits and

Taryn Lopez measuring the temperature of gas emissions near summit of Augustine Volcano.

I took this picture while setting up a study of this invasive spp.  Of snail.