Videos

Interviews with staff at Point Reyes National Seashore tell how this National Park Service unit uses USGS science to educate visitors, and manage the park.
 

Tarantula hawk wasps sting and paralyze tarantulas to feed their young. USGS Ecologist Todd Esque captured this video of a tarantula hawk wasp dragging a tarantula through the desert in Mexico. 

Cell phone video of USGS biologist Diego Johnson releasing a golden eagle that had just been fitted with a tracking device.  The work is informing land managers on eagle movements in the southwest, an area of expanding renewable energy development.

This video shows a Pacific pocket mouse (Perognathus longimembris pacificus) sandbathing at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in 2015.

This short video features incredible and graphic images and video of golden eagle prey. These birds are eating machines. USGS biologist-rock climbers install nest cameras to study the eating habits of golden eagles and their young in the Mojave Desert.

Remnants of former ranching enterprises, feral horses can still be found on Santa Rosa Island, part of the remote and hauntingly gorgeous Channel Islands National Park off the coast of Los Angeles.

“Endangered” may sometimes seem like a vague term, but it is an unfortunately suited description for the Island Bush-Mallow (Malacothamnus fasciculatus var. nesioticus).

Imagine being a fragile seedling pushing through the earth and reaching for the sun — but constantly being smothered by strange grasses growing faster and taller than you are. That is the plight of the Island Phacelia (Phacelia insularis var.

This presentation, "A mammal's take on the Rapture Hypothesis, Jacob's Ladder, and other notions of doom, gloom, and predictable uniform change in high elevation ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada", was conducted by Robert Klinger as a part of the Climate Change Science and Management Webinar Series.

Southern California's fire ecology is unlike that of anywhere else in the United States. Fire control strategies developed for mountain forests don't have the same results here. So can science help uncover new answers to help Southern California communities manage and live with wildfires?

USGS biologists are using GPS technology to track carnivores as they cross the highways of urban Southern California.

In order to study sea otters in the wild, research divers on the Pacific Nearshore Project must brave frigid waters from Alaska to California. Here's an explanation of how this special equipment works.

How do you catch a sea otter? Very carefully. Researchers must use high-tech equipment and teamwork in order to safely capture these marine mammals and collect blood samples and conduct health exams as part of the Pacific Nearshore Project.

This video clip highlights the types of technology being used to research and study the movements of the desert tortoise and how they're using the habitat.

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This time-lapse video shows the dramatic natural tidal cycles of a salt marsh in San Francisco Bay -- daily rhythms to which animals take refuge in high ground, and the marsh receives sediment and nutrients from the estuary. But what will happen to these marsh ecosystems under sea level rise scenarios?

How will sea level rise impact coastal ecosystems like salt marshes? Will plant species change and shift available habitat for local wildlife? Or will the marsh be completely inundated? USGS scientists are conducting extensive elevation and habitat surveys along the U.S. Pacific Coast, and using the data to model sea level rise impact for the next 100 years.

How will sea level rise impact coastal ecosystems like salt marshes? Will plant species change and shift available habitat for local wildlife? Or will the marsh be completely inundated? USGS scientists are conducting extensive elevation and habitat surveys along the U.S. Pacific Coast, and using the data to model sea level rise impact for the next 100 years.

How will sea level rise impact coastal ecosystems like salt marshes? Will plant species change and shift available habitat for local wildlife? Or will the marsh be completely inundated? USGS scientists are conducting extensive elevation and habitat surveys along the U.S. Pacific Coast, and using the data to model sea level rise impact for the next 100 years.