Human Influence

USGS researchers are studying how science facilitation can help diverse and interdisciplinary teams of scientists collaborate effectively and develop a common scientific understanding of complex challenges.

The Dragonfly Mercury Project measures mercury concentrations in dragonfly larvae from U.S. National Parks and other protected places across the country. This information helps scientists, resource managers, and policymakers assess potential environmental health risks due to mercury, track patterns over time, and assess the efficacy of mercury mitigation efforts. Explore this website to learn more...

Our work uses a range of social science methods including interviews, surveys, listening sessions, workshops, and document analysis, to understand how Department of the Interior land managers and others make natural resource decisions.

This research theme provides land managers information to help them make restoration decision at local and landscape scales.

This research theme informs adaptive management and siting decsions in relation to bats at wind and solar power-generation facilities.

Conifer forests in the Pacific Northwest are biologically and economically important, are intensively managed for multiple uses, and represent a large area in public domain. Therefore, understanding how management of conifer forests affects biodiversity across a range of spatial and temporal scales is critical for land management agencies.

Aquatic invasive species, like bullfrogs, stocked fish, crayfish, and reed canarygrass can affect aquatic systems in a variety of ways and have been linked to declines in some amphibians.

This research theme addresses several issues important in deriving accurate and precise estimates of fatality at wind and solar power-generation facilities.