USGS Wildland Fire Science
USGS science helps understand the causes, consequences, and benefits of wildfire and helps prevent and manage larger, catastrophic events.
USGS science helps understand the causes, consequences, and benefits of wildfire and helps prevent and manage larger, catastrophic events.
USGS Drought Science
Helping managers understand the interactions that determine the magnitude and impact of drought on water availability and ecosystems across the Nation
Helping managers understand the interactions that determine the magnitude and impact of drought on water availability and ecosystems across the Nation
Ecosystems Science at USGS
Ecosystems Mission Area
The USGS Ecosystems Mission Area provides science that directly benefits the health, safety, and prosperity of the American people by providing trusted and timely information to help address the Nation’s toughest management and conservation issues impacting public lands and the surrounding communities that benefit from them.
Newsletter - EcoNews
Newsletter - EcoNews
This quarterly newsletter highlights ecosystems science and activities coming out of our Science Centers and Cooperative Research Units across the Nation.
Webinar - Friday's Findings
Webinar - Friday's Findings
A public webinar series meant to offer our audience an opportunity to discover the Ecosystems science capacity within the USGS.
Where's our Science?
Where's our Science?
Find out where Ecosystems Science Centers, Field Stations, Climate Adaptation Science Centers, and Cooperative Research Units are located.
News
Protecting Protected Land from Pesticides
Protecting Protected Land from Pesticides
Scent Dogs Join Tick Surveillance Efforts
Scent Dogs Join Tick Surveillance Efforts
Wild about wildlife: leveraging park visitor support to fund conservation
Wild about wildlife: leveraging park visitor support to fund conservation
Publications
A partner-driven decision support model to inform the reintroduction of bull trout
Assessments of species reintroductions involve a series of complex decisions that include human perspectives and ecological contexts. Here, we present a reintroduction assessment involving bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) using a structured decision-making process. We approached this assessment by engaging partners representing public utilities, government agencies, and Tribes with...
Failure to meet the exchangeability assumption in Bayesian multispecies occupancy models: Implications for study design
Bayesian hierarchical models are ubiquitous in ecology. Random effect model structures are often employed that treat individual effects as deviations from larger population-level effects. In this way individuals are assumed to be "exchangeable" samples. Ecologists may address this exchangeability assumption intuitively, but might in certain modeling contexts ignore it altogether...
Status and trends of the Lake Huron prey fish community, 1976-2024
The U. S. Geological Survey-Great Lakes Science Center has monitored annual changes in the offshore (depth > 9m) prey fish community of Lake Huron since 1973. Monitoring of prey fish populations in Lake Huron is based on a bottom trawl survey that targets demersal species (i.e., those predominantly or intermittently associated with the lake bottom) and an acoustic-midwater trawl survey...
Science
Beyond the Usual Suspects: A Comprehensive Look at Agricultural Stream Contaminants
Clean water is essential for both environmental health and human safety, but many everyday products and activities can contribute to water pollution including contaminants such as microplastics, harmful chemicals such as pharmaceuticals and pesticides, and antibiotic resistance genes. A recent USGS study in Iowa investigated pollutants in streams, including stream sediment and biota, to determine...
USGS Science in Support of Economic Growth
Science provided by the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area helps boost America’s economy by providing practical tools to implement cost-effective management and development strategies that supports the Nation’s economic growth and protects our natural heritage.
Marine Bird Populations and the Gulf of Mexico Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (GoMMAPPS)
The objective of the Gulf of Mexico Marine Assessment for Protected Species (GoMMAPPS) project was to document the occurrence and diversity of bird species in nearshore and open sea environments of the Gulf of America for the purposes of better informing regulatory and other decisions that influence the conservation of migratory birds.