Images

The USGS National Wildlife Health Center conducts a bat autopsy as part of its efforts to study the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome in bats.

In efforts to monitor potential bird flu transmission pathways, the USGS works with international partners to mark and track whooper swans with GPS transmitters.

USGS microbiology technician evaluates a bacterial assay to determine the cause of a wildlife mortality. The USGS National Wildlife Health Center works to identify, track, and prevent wildlife disease.

Researchers from the USGS National Wildlife Health Center examine a duck as part of part of efforts to identify, track, and prevent wildlife disease.

A section of the Upper Green River Valley in western Wyoming, just south of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, showing different ecosystems (such as forests, wetlands, and aquatic habitats) whose capacities for carbon storage and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will be assessed by the USGS.

Dr. Sasha Reed is a research ecologist with the USGS who was honored with a 2011 PECASE award.

Sunrise peering through early morning tule fog in Suisun Bay, California.

Sunrise reflecting on a November morning on the Sacramento River, California.

Mikhail Malin, visiting IBIW scientist, prepares to lowers a hydroacoustic transducer into the water from a CERC research vessel below Bagnell Dam on the Osage River, Missouri.  The CERC and IBIW collaborated with the Missouri Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Missouri to assess the distribution of paddlefish below the dam us

Nine-year-old pallid sturgeon wait in holding tanks for their turn to be evaluated by biologists at CERC.  More than 100 pallid sturgeon made the trip from Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery to Columbia on a snowy December day.

Creosote bush shrublands are one of the driest Sonoran Desert plant communities; the creosote bush and white ratany are the dominant plants; a USGS study showed that their coverage is likely to decrease with forecasted climate change because of less winter precipitation and more aridity.

In the semiarid mesquite savanna community, pictured here, perennial grasses and forbs both are likely to decline as annual and winter precipitation decline with forecasted climate change.

Deer in Shenandoah National Park.

Tree after spring blizzard.

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.

A pair of pelicans and in the background a Great Blue Heron in a Wetland at Summerlake Wildlife Area.

Bumble bee over a cone flower.

Three bumble bees around a cone flower.

Local ducks playing at home in the park.

These rice plants show the difference in growth of rice plants exposed to salt when grown with and without endophytes, which are mutually beneficial microscopic fungi that live in most plants.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Deanna Archuleta tours the Bonneville Dam to view the fish ladder and in particular the native Pacific Lampreys used as first foods by Tribes along the Columbia River.