Images

H.D. McGlashan measures streamflow in the Merced River, circa 1920. Multiple velocity and water-depth measurements along a stream cross section are used to calculate the total volume of water passing a certain location over a specific period of time (cubic feet per second).

Location: Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California

Aerial view over Weka Dur, Afghanistan’s largest known gold deposit, Badakhshan Province.

Tools of the trade for a US Geological Survey engraver- the burin and the hand lens, resting on a contours engraving.

The steady hands of a USGS engraver touching up left-reading lettering.

Panoramic photo of Silverton, Colorado, with Sultan Mountain in the distance.  Silverton is the town most directly affected by the Gold King mine blowout. 

Clouds Overlying a Forest.

A Cascades frog peeks out of the water in Olympic National Park.

Forest cover being removed for cattle pasturage and development. Smoke from bulldozed trees is visible in background with cattle in the foreground.

Larval Pacific lamprey collected from the upper Umatilla River in northeastern Oregon.

Helicopter towing a large, wire-loop contraption hanging from a cable is turning in air on a relatively clear day in Nebraska.

Aerial view of the USGS Great lakes Science Center Hammond Bay Biological Station at Hammond Bay, Michigan.

This adolescent chick, hatched and raised at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, is one of ten whooping cranes being released in Louisiana in February 2011. It is a milestone for the state and for the birds, which have not lived in the state since the 1950s.

A class photo! The entire gang of adolescent whooping crane chicks together at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md. The chicks, hatched and raised by USGS caretakers, are being released into the wild in Louisiana in February 2011.  It is a milestone for the state and for the birds, which have not lived in the state since the 1950s.

This adolescent chick, hatched and raised at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, is one of ten whooping cranes being released in Louisiana in February 2011. It is a milestone for the state and for the birds, which have not lived in the state since the 1950s.

This adolescent chick, hatched and raised at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, is one of ten whooping cranes being released in Louisiana in February 2011. It is a milestone for the state and for the birds, which have not lived in the state since the 1950s.

Thomas A. Jaggar founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in 1912 and served as its Director until 1940.  Shown here in 1925, Jaggar is at work in HVO's first building, which, at the time, was located on the northeast rim of Kīlauea Volcano’s summit caldera, near the present-day Volcano House hotel.

A copper-striped blue-tailed skink (Emoia impar) photographed in Samoa during a USGS field survey.

Infrared mosaic image of Mars Gale crater by the Thermal Emission Imaging Spectrometer (THEMIS) of the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and Arizona State University. The Mars Science Laboratory is scheduled to land in Gale crater Aug. 5, 2012.

Erik Hofmeister, NWHC veterinarian and research scientist, holds a zebra finch, a species which serves as a laboratory model for study of avian diseases.

USGS scientist Tom Frost stands on the northeast rim of the Blacktail pit of the Blackbird cobalt-copper mine, in the Salmon River Mountains of east-central Idaho.

USGS scientist Art Bookstrom uses a hand-lens to search for sulfide minerals in oxidized copper-cobalt-bearing siltite of the banded siltite unit of the Apple Creek Formation, exposed in the Blacktail pit of the Blackbird cobalt-copper mine, Salmon River Mountains, east-central Idaho.