Images

A class photo! The entire gang of adolescent whooping crane chicks appear to be ice skating at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md.

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.

Suzanne Nicholson, USGS, collecting soil at one of the sites in New Jersey, on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean just south of Atlantic City.

In 1986, Lake Nyos, in the volcanic region of Cameroon, released a cloud of CO₂ into the atmosphere, killing 1,700 people and 3,500 livestock in nearby towns and villages. Since then, engineers have been artificially removing the gas from the lake through piping. This photo shows the Lake Nyos pipe in operation.

2006 Rockslide on Ferguson-Hwy 140 in California along the Merced River about 8 miles west of El Portal and the entrance of Yosemite National Park.

USGS scientist Art Bookstrom looks at puzzling sedimentary structures in metasedimentary rocks of the Apple Creek Formation, near the Jackass prospect, near Iron Creek, in the southeastern part of the Idaho cobalt belt, in east-central Idaho.

USGS scientist Art Bookstrom hammers on limonite-stained breccia, cutting banded siltite of the Apple Creek Formation, exposed near the Uncle Sam portal of the Blackbird cobalt-copper mine, in the Salmon River Mountains of east-central Idaho.

USGS scientist Art Bookstrom photographs copper-stained banded siltite, exposed in the Blacktail pit of the Blackbird cobalt-copper mine, Salmon River Mountains, east-central Idaho.

USGS scientist John Slack holds his hammer to a biotitic mafic dike, intruded into twice-folded banded siltite, exposed in the Hawkeye adit of the Blackbird cobalt-copper mine, in the Salmon River Mountains of east-central Idaho. Biotite is a type of mica, and mafic refers to a high magnesium and iron content.

The river outlet tubes at Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River in Arizona. At noon Monday, Nov. 19, U.S.

The ice froze around the fence post, the stage in the river went up, then the river froze again, creating a large gage height correction - Heart River near Richardton, North Dakota.

Fine-grained silica sand is mixed with chemicals and water before being pumped into rock formations to prevent the newly created artificial fractures from closing after hydraulic fracturing is completed.

Well heads hooked up in preparation for a hydraulic fracturing operation at a drill pad in the Fayetteville Shale gas play of Arkansas.

A water impoundment at a drill pad in the Fayetteville Shale gas play of Arkansas.

A water impoundment at a natural gas drilling site 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.

Team of scientists working together to insert a tracking device in a 14 foot Burmese python.

A view of the badlands terrain with Bakken oil and gas production "pads" in the distance, Billings County, North Dakota. 

A view of the badlands terrain with Bakken oil and gas production "pads" in the distance, Billings County, North Dakota. 

Herring larvae 15 days post-hatch. Food in the gut appears orange.

Currently four age classes (0, 1, 2, and 4 year olds) of SPF herring are maintained at the Marrowstone Marine Field Station.