United States of America
Land Subsidence: Decomposition of Organic Soils
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta of California was once a great tidal freshwater marsh. It is blanketed by peat and peaty alluvium deposited where streams originating in the Sierra Nevada, Coast Ranges, and South Cascade Range enter San Francisco Bay. In the late 1800s, levees were built along the stream channels, and the land thus protected from flooding was drained, cleared, and planted ('...
Aquifer Compaction due to Groundwater Pumping
Although land subsidence caused by groundwater pumping has caused many negative effects on human civil works for centuries, especially in the highly developed urban or industrialized areas of Europe, the relation between subsidence and groundwater pumpage was not understood or recognized for a long time. Recognition began in 1928 when pioneer researcher O.E. Meinzer of the U.S. Geological...
Yellowstone National Park Integrated Studies- JoAnn Holloway
The goal of the project supported by the internship is to evaluate mineral assemblages in drill hole core collected from Yellowstone National Park using spectral methods, determine subsurface structures using electromagnetic methods, and to evaluate the distribution of rare earth elements and other trace metals associated with minerals using scanning electron microscopy and electron microprobe...
Water, ice, and alteration - airborne geophysical imaging of active volcanic systems- Paul Bedrosian
The USGS will soon collect airborne geophysical data over hydrothermal features of Yellowstone National Park to study the subsurface plumbing, alteration, and mineralization. Other airborne data over Iliamna Volcano, Alaska are also being used to address flank collapse, a hazard which may trigger lahars and eruptions. Expertise is needed to analyze the geophysical data over these active...
Effects of Nanophyetus salmincola on the Health and Survival of Puget Sound Steelhead
Low early marine survival rates of Puget Sound steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss), the state fish of Washington, have contributed to its dramatic population decline and current listing as a “Threatened Species” under the Endangered Species Act. Determining the cause(s) of this elevated mortality remains a primary objective of the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, a large US / Canada effort...
The Influence of Natural Organic Matter on the Biogeochemistry, Fate and Transport of Metals, Metal Colloids and Nanoparticles in the Aquatic Environment- Kate Campbell
This work will explore the frontiers of organic-inorganic geochemistry by investigating the fundamental nature of dissolved organic matter (DOM)-metal interactions for metals and nanomaterials of environmental significance.
Alaska Science Center Previous Seminars
The USGS Alaska Science Center has a monthly seminar series that runs from October through May. This series highlights the multiple research programs that are taking place across all disciplines at the center.
Listed below are previous seminars given.
Genomic Mechanisms that Underlie Lack of Recovery of Prince William Sound Herring Following the 1990s Collapse
In the decades following the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (EVOS), it has become increasingly apparent that oil can be toxic at extremely low concentrations to developing fish embryos including herring, where some toxic phenotypes may be apparent during embryogenesis, but some are delayed until later in life. Therefore, acute and lingering oil may act as an insidious selective force within...
Herring Disease Program
Using an approach that involves a combination of field- and laboratory-based studies, we are investigating fish health factors that may be contributing to the failed recovery of Pacific herring populations in Prince William Sound, AK. Field studies are providing infection and disease prevalence data to inform the population models, serological data that indicate the prior exposure history and...
Nanophyetus salmincola - MMFS
Fish Diseases
Nanophyetus salmincola
Lunar Kaguya Multiband Imager Mosaics
This page introduces the Kaguya Multiband Imager derived spectral and derived mineral maps by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the University of Hawaii. The mosaics were created from topographically-corrected MI reflectance data acquired by the JAXA SELENE/Kaguya mission (see Ohtake et al., 2013) from the Kaguya Archive MI MAP processing level version 2 (MI...
Terrestrial wildlife and unconventional oil and gas development: high volume horizontal drilling- Paula Henry
The goal of this research project is to determine whether recent developments in unconventional energy extraction may be putting resident terrestrial wildlife at risk of decline.