Images

Curlews migrate long distances each year. Captured birds are quickly removed from mist nets and transported to the care of a veterinarian, who performs the implant surgeries to outfit the bird with a tracking device. In June 2007, USGS scientists tagged 13 curlews with satellite transmitters at their southern breeding area in Alaska.

The endangered Devils Hole pupfish lives only in Devils Hole in the Mojave Desert.

A USGS technician collects a water sample at the Faka Union Canal Weir #1, Collier County, Florida. The sample was used to help determine the source of the warm water responsible for the site's popularity among manatees as a warm water refuge.

Tree after spring blizzard.

Deer in Shenandoah National Park.

Shallow coral reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands are in jeopardy due to climate warming and ocean acidification.

Red knots, an at-risk shorebird, at Delaware Bay. Red knots like to feed on horseshoe crab eggs to refuel after their marathon migrations of some 10,000 miles. Declines of horseshoe crabs and red knots seem to be related.

Lead shot in the fall zone at the Broadkiln Sportsman's Club (quarter-coin for scale).

A blood sample is collected from every pallid sturgeon that is implanted with a telemetry transmitter. 

Researchers are deploying an underwater microscope (or "sand-cam") from the R/V Theodore H. Schmudde.

Two Cladonia lichen species, C. stellaris and C. rangiferina are pictured here among some blueberry plants in Newfoundland.  Lichens -- which are often mistaken for moss -- are unusual plant-like organisms that are actually symbioses of fungi, algae and bacteria living together.

Equipped with a multibeam bathymetric system and acoustic Doppler current profiler, the research vessel Lucien Brush was deployed to make comprehensive maps of the potential spawning area.  In order to collect precise location data, a base station is set-up within view of the area to be mapped.  Luckily, a sandbar was still peaking above the river’s surfac

Specialized, directional, underwater microphones, or hydrophones are lowered into the water to “hear” acoustic tags implanted in pallid sturgeon.

Amy George uses a microscope and imaging software to measure larval Acipenseriformes collected in the Missouri River. 

USGS and NPS personnel placed a GPS-transmitter on a California Condor at Pinnacles National Monument.  Photo was taken when the bird was released after attaching the transmitter.

This Chinook was tagged and then released back into the Klickitat River where we tracked its movements up and down the river.

Annual alligator nesting surveys in south Florida provide valuable information about water deliveries and sea level rise, as salinity intrusion or unnatural inflows decrease nesting success.

GLSC dive team called to do inspection of Kalispell for zebra mussels.

In the Rocky Mountain West, people and wildlife inhabit many of the same areas and USGS scientists are studying wildlife diseases, such as brucellosis in elk and bison, and how these diseases are transmitted between domestic and non-domestic hosts. 

Local Ducks hanging out at home in the park.

Pallid sturgeon eggs freshly spawned and fertilized in a laboratory at the Columbia Environmental Research Center.