Images

Bedrock exposed at low tide along the beach at Isla Vista, California

Beach loss and armoring at Goleta Beach, very low (negative) tide

The desmid family of single-celled green algae are never found in abundance, says USGS biologist Barry Rosen. They inhabit the soft, slightly acidic water of wetlands that depend on rainwater, like Florida’s Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. They don’t “bloom” en masse, but their presence is an indicator of good water quality.

This Indian Space Research Organization LISS-3 image of the Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay region, acquired on January 25, 2017, shows the landscape along the densely populated U.S. East coast. Ecosystems and sea-level rise are among the regional landscape changes that satellite imagery helps to monitor. 

Student Aurelia Mitchell recently trekked up into the Sandia Mountains to collect snow data as part of an ongoing hydrologic study in the East Mountains, conducted in cooperation with the Bernalillo County Public Works Division. They measured the depth and density of the snow in several locations to determine the snow/water equivalent.

Analysis of shoreline changes at Bogoslof volcano due to eruptive activity between January 11 and 24, 2017. The base image is a Worldview-2 satellite image collected on January 24, 2017. The approximate location of the shoreline on January 11, 2017 is shown by the dashed orange line.

Hydrologist Ryan McCutcheon and student Aurelia Mitchell recently trekked up into the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico to collect snow data as part of an ongoing hydrologic study in the East Mountains, conducted in cooperation with the Bernalillo County Public Works Division.

This telephoto image from January 19, 2017, shows spattering along a down-welling section of Kīlauea Volcano's summit lava lake. The main area of spattering was about 10 m (32 ft) high, but some lava fragments were thrown even higher.

Annotated photograph of Bogoslof Island showing the cumulative effects of 2016-17 eruptive activity. A layer of fine muddy appearing ash drapes most of the landscape and covers pre-existing vegetation. The dashed line indicates the area excavated by explosive eruptive activity so far.

A U.S. Geological Survey field crew uses an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler to measure water velocity on the Truckee River in Reno, Nevada.

Morning snowfall at the Leetown Science Center's Administration building.

A sonar-equipped personal watercraft mapping the bathymetry underwater near Santa Cruz, Calif.

USGS scientists readying a sonar-equipped boat to map the ocean bottom near Santa Cruz, Calif.

USGS scientist Daniel Hoover mapping the beach at Santa Cruz with a GPS-equipped backpack unit.

 USGS scientists setting up a lidar scanner on the pier to map the beach near Capitola, California.

Example of a closed canopy plantation logged 60 years ago at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon, old growth forests have bigger trees and a more complex understory.

A Chinese firebelly newt (Cynops orientalis), the first salamander species found to be infected with the spring viraemia of carp virus.

Torbernite is a copper phosphate mineral that contains uranium, making it somewhat radioactive. Although it can be used as a uranium ore, it's more valued as a collectors mineral. It can be used as a good indicator of uranium deposits, however.

GeoGirls hike onto the Pumice Plain to learn more about Mount St. Helens’ historical

eruptions.

Coal is loaded into trucks at the Trapper Mine in northwest Colorado.

Many species of Hawaiian honeycreepers have persisted into the 20th century because high elevation rain forests on the islands of Kaua’i, Maui, and Hawai’i are cool enough to limit transmission of introduced avian malaria (Plasmodium relictum).