Images

A herder moves cattle through a barren landscape in eastern Africa.

An invasive species, the spiny water flea, is likely a primary driver of changes in Lake Huron's food web over the past decade.

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.

Photo of fossil algae (dinocyst). Specimen is about 90 micrometers across.The largest known impact crater in the U.S. lies buried beneath the Virginia Coastal Plain.

Helicopter with magnetometer mounted in stinger.

Data collected from long distance swims by Polar bears suggest that they do not stop to rest during their journey.

Data collected from long distance swims by Polar bears suggest that they do not stop to rest during their journey.

Debris flow deposits in Stevens Creek fan near Durango, Colorado. This area is in a drainage basin burned by the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire in Colorado.

Culex species mosquito biting a human hand.

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. 

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.

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.

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.