Images

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.

Pacific Lamprey mouth suckers adhered to the glass at Bonneville Dam fish viewing window.

The native Pacific Lamprey uses the fish ladder at Bonneville Dam.  This species plays a significant role in the foodweb and in Tribal "first foods".--cultural.

Data storage tags (DST) implanted in telemetered pallid sturgeon record the water temperture and fish depth at pre-programed time intervals. 

Trammel net deployment on the Missouri River.  The wooden object with 2 white buoys in the river is called a "Buck" or a "Mule" and is used to pull the end of the net along in the current.

Study chamber containing a pregnant pocketbook mussel (Lampsilis cardium) exposed to an elevated water temperature of 32 degrees Celsius. This mussel is showing signs of stress--lying on top of the substrate and unable to burrow.

Alicia Torregrosa download data from a phenocam located in Idaho. The phenocam takes a picture daily and that data is used to help track phenological changes (the timing and vigor of seasonal biological events). The data from the phenocam is used (with other data) to gain a better understanding of vegetation changes over the entire ecoregion.

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

After a long struggle to position the fish just right, a double-crested cormorant finishes off a relatively young spotted gar.

Scientists hike up the Little Colorado River to assist in installing remote PIT tag readers to more efficiently keep track of native, endangered fish populations.

Though not as charismatic, the underwater periphyton and other vegetation are the primary support for all other life in the ecosystem.

USGS research is at the intersection of geology and biology – the whole of the desert.

Hooks baited with worms are clipped to trotlines in an effort to catch pallid sturgeon in the Lower Missouri River.

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

Blood samples from pallid sturgeon are taken to assess hormone levels and reproductive condition. 

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.

An American alligator and a Burmese python locked in a struggle to prevail in Everglades National Park. This python appears to be losing, but snakes in similar situations have apparently escaped unharmed, and in other situations pythons have eaten alligators.

Lisbon Chute is a side channel to the Missouri River between Glasgow and Arrow Rock, Missouri, on the Big Muddy National Wildlife Refuge. It currently has a rock inlet structure (pictured) which controls the amount of water that flows into it from the main channel of the Missouri River.

NPS citizen scientist Eleanor Comings counts loon carcasses at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore during a large botulism outbreak in October of 2012.

A screenshot from the USGS film "Living with Fire".

USGS Western Ecological Research Center ecologist Carlton Rochester handles a rattlesnake in San Diego County, Calif.