Images

Led by Dr. Al Zale with the Montana Cooperative Fishery Research Unit at Montana State University, researchers Michael Lance and T. David Ritter are working closely with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks personnel, local landowners, and engineers to study salmonid movements in the popular Smith River system in central Montana.

The USGS monitors water quality at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Empire, Michigan. 

The USGS monitors water quality at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Empire, Michigan. 

River channel mapping boats on a sandbar beach on the Colorado River, in Grand Canyon, 2016. USGS photo, public domain.

A piping plover adult standing over a nest scrape with four eggs. Photo was taken on the Garrison Reach of the Missouri River, North Dakota

A piping plover adult stands on a sandbar on the Garrison Reach of the Missouri River, North Dakota. The yellow alphanumeric leg flag and color bands that identify it are clearly visible.

Two banded piping plover adults stand near a nest with a small video camera pointed at it on a sandbar on the Garrison Reach of the Missouri River, North Dakota. The yellow alphanumeric leg flag and color bands that identify it are clearly visible. Video cameras were used to identify adults attending nests. 

A pink-footed shearwater in flight.

NPS/USGS remote den camera. Fisher family denning in a mountain beaver burrow. Look carefully! Two fisher kits in front of their den site in a mountain beaver burrow (foreground) with mom (background left) watching on. The kits are about 4-5 months old.

A female Agassiz's desert tortoise at Joshua Tree National Park lounges in the entrance of her burrow, wearing a USGS radio.

A USGS grizzly bear researcher snapped this picture of a mother grizzly bear and her cub in Yellowstone National Park. Adult females are the most important segment of the grizzly bear populations because they are the reproductive engine.

Biological soil crusts, or biocrusts, are lichens, mosses, and cyanobacteria that grow on the soil surface and are common in the spaces between native plants in arid and semi-arid systems. Biocrusts reduce soil erosion, contribute to nutrient and water cycling, and reduce evaporation and invasion by exotic plants.

Researcher wearing blue gloves holds a northern long-eared bat during a field trip to Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. 

Cattle graze on a ranch in western Montana.

Elk grazing at a feedground in Wyoming.

Blue Shiner, Cyprinella caerulea

Interpretive signage created by interpretive designer and illustrator Denise Dahn, with murals of USGS Western Fisheries Research Center Pump House created by Jeff Jacobson in background.

Washington Post article on the impacts of DDT on birds.

USGS scientists conduct a post-construction assessment of the Cottrellville Shoreline Restoration Project on the St. Clair River, Michigan.

The Florida Keys reefs have been experiencing a severe disease outbreak from 2014 to present called Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD).

Laysan albatross with chick on Kauai, 2016.