Images

A bat flies over a lake.

Animated GIF of a recently hatched Mojave Desert tortoise falling down on its back. This GIF came from a movie that was produced by the USGS Western Ecological Research Center and USGS Western Region Office of Communications in cooperation with the Las Vegas based Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, the U.S.

This is an animated GIF of a bee pollinating a flower. This video comes from The USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, located in the Northern Great Plains state of North Dakota highlights their current and ongoing research on land use and pollinator health. 

Piping plover adult flying over Lake Sakakawea, North Dakota. 

An animated GIF of lava spattering at  Pu'u 'O 'o crater pulled from the Pu'u 'O'o Producing Spattering video.

A montage of four Chesapeake Bay aerial photos. L-R: A waterfront residential community; row crops bordered by forest; Baltimore Harbor; piers and crab pots in a waterfront fishing community.

Atlantic Sturgeon, Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus. Photo by Ryan Hagerty/USFWS.

A helicopter towing a large, cylindrical sensor will make low-level flights over parts of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as part of a groundwater survey in May 2017.

An extremely rare Mojave River western pond turtle was recently observed by USGS scientists and staff from The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in the Mojave Desert. Turtles of this population have rarely been seen since the late 1990s.

A helicopter towing a large, cylindrical sensor will make low-level flights over parts of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as part of a groundwater survey in May 2017.

A helicopter towing a large, cylindrical sensor will make low-level flights over parts of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as part of a groundwater survey in May 2017.

The Colorado River in Grand Canyon taken from Grand Canyon Village, Arizona. 

A helicopter towing a large, cylindrical sensor will make low-level flights over parts of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as part of a groundwater survey in May 2017.

Brown patches and brown stems show stress in this phagmites (roseau cane) stand in Pass A Loutre Wildlife Management Area, a tract of state-owned land in Louisiana's bird foot delta, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. An ongoing phragmites was first discovered in spring 2017 and blamed on an invasive scale insect from Asia.

Some single-celled green algae in the desmid family are symmetrical, with two halves joined by a bridge containing the cell’s nucleus. USGS biologist Barry H. Rosen and colleagues have been sampling desmids in Florida’s Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge for more than a year.

USGS hydrologic technician measures floodwaters along Flat Creek near Jenkins, Missouri using an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiling instrument. 

USGS hydrologic technician Christopher Rowden verifies the accuracy of streamgage information at the Jacks Fork River at Eminence, Missouri.

This infographic displays the different minerals located in mobile devices. Included within this infographic are:

This image of the New Orleans/Lake Pontchartrain area in Louisiana was acquired March 31, 2017, from the Indian Space Research Organization’s Resourcesat-2 LISS-3 sensor. Land loss and hurricane hazards are key landscape issues here. 

The pike killifish, native to Mexico and Central America, was one of 13 nonnative fish species that biologists discovered during the two-day Fish Slam in Big Cypress National Preserve, March 22 and 23, 2017.

Mineral: Wolframite
Primary Commodity: Tungsten
Primary Commodity Uses: Tungsten is one of the densest metals on the planet, and therefore gets used in metalworking and construction, as well as in heat sinks, weights, and even vibrating batteries.