Images

These two minerals are apophyllite and prehnite. Both apophyllite, the clear crystals, and prehnite, the green mineral, are primarily prized as collectors minerals. 

Sample provided by Carlin Green, USGS. Sample originated from Virginia Crushed Stone Quarry, Virginia, and is 4.6cm in size.

A sample of bastnaesite, one of the principal mineral sources of rare-earth elements. Rare-earth elements are essential components in most modern electronics.

The quality of the water we drink can potentially impact our health. The USGS has several programs and cooperative projects that characterize the quality of selected rivers and aquifers used as sources of drinking water to community water systems in the United States.

Researchers survey Elwha River elevation and depths. Clockwise from upper left: setting up a traditional survey instrument above the river; measuring river depths from a kayak with sonar and GPS; walking the beach with GPS backpacks; and determining offshore depths using a personal watercraft with GPS and sonar.

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).

Ocoee River, Tennessee

Sandy beach and cliffs at Moss Landing, California

Large storm waves crashing on the rocks near Santa Cruz, California

Scientists sample a rough-skinned newt for the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, or Bsal, at a pond near Portland, Oregon. Bsal is decimating wild salamander populations in Europe and could emerge in the U.S. thro

This is a sample of axinite with iron, making it ferroaxinite. Axinite is primarily used as a collectors mineral.

Sample provided by Carlin Green, USGS. Sample originated from Puiva Mount, Russia, and is 3.0cm in size.

Elbaite is one of the best-known members of the tourmaline mineral family, particularly for its high-quality gemstones. Read more about the tourmaline mineral family here. 

Epidote is a silicate mineral used mostly as a semiprecious gemstone.

Sample provided by Carlin Green, USGS. Sample originated from Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, and is 6.0cm in size.

Bath Creek, upstream of Blowing Springs Campground, George Washington National Forest, Bath County, VA.

This sample is of the mineral cerussite, once an important source of lead for paints and pigments. With the phasing out of lead-based paints, cerussite is now mostly valued as a collectors mineral.

Sample provided by Carlin Green, USGS. Sample originated from Mibladen, Morocco, and is 5.6cm in size.

GeoGirls learn about how the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens impacted the ecology of the area.

JJ Thordsen (USGS) and a wireline operator retrieving downhole vacuum sampler from a characterization well near a CO2 injection well at Citronelle oil field, Alabama.