Images

A female Chinook salmon, among the first wave of fish to recolonize waters that haven't had salmon in 100 years, excavates a nest inside Olympic National Park. 

Culex species mosquito biting a human hand.

USGS scientist Art Bookstrom looks at greenish copper stain and pale pink cobalt bloom on limonite-stained meta-siltite and meta-argillite at the No Name prospect, near Iron Creek, in the southeastern part of the Idaho cobalt belt, in east-central Idaho.

USGS scientist Tom Frost measures the distance across the transition from garnet-bearing rocks, upslope from the end of the tape, to garnet-free rocks below it, as exposed on the northeast wall of the Blacktail pit of the Blackbird cobalt-copper mine, in the Salmon River Mountains of east-central Idaho.

A test-well for collecting gas hydrates in Mallik, Canada. Gas hydrates are naturally-occurring “ice-like” combinations of natural gas and water that have the potential to provide an immense resource of natural gas from the world’s oceans and polar regions.

A typical drill pad in the Marcellus Shale gas play of southwestern Pennsylvania.

A drill rig at a well site in the Marcellus Shale gas play of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Steel pipe used in a well in the Marcellus Shale gas play of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Equipment set up to pump water from a lake to an impoundment for hydraulic fracturing in the Fayetteville Shale of Arkansas.

Bakken drilling and completion activities at a well along Interstate-94, 6 miles east of Belfield, North Dakota.

A drill rig in the Bakken oil field in Stark County, western North Dakota. 

Blackside dace are a type of minnow with a red underbelly and a black stripe down their sides. They are found only in parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and western Virginia. The image shows a school of Blackside dace.

This photo was taken at Station 4 in 2009 before the Great Works Dam was removed. This location was just upstream of the dam and water levels are significantly lower now that the dam is removed.

IGBST researchers begin gathering biological data from the bear.  The kerchief over the bear's eyes protects it from dust and debris and reduces visual stimulation. The small tubing in its nose, known as a nasal cannula, delivers oxygen to the animal while it is tranquilized.

Drought and climate change are causing extensive forest dieback in the U.S. West as well as worldwide. These photos show dead ponderosa pines in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico killed by a combination of drought stress and attacks by bark beetles on weakened trees.

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).

An adult female polar bear and her two cubs travel across the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean north of the Alaska coast.

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).

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).

These live Asian swamp eels were imported from southeast Asia and sold in an urban food market in the U.S. Raw or undercooked Asian swamp eels could transmit a parasitic infection called gnathostomiasis to consumers, and wild eels could become widespread in some U.S. waters.

A photomicrograph depicting the calcium carbonate tests of ten species of marine foraminiferans. Upon death, their tests can form calcareous marine sediments known as foraminiferan ooze.