USGS Ecosystems Podcast Series - Outstanding in the Field Active

In this episode of Outstanding in the Field we head to southern Florida to learn about one of North America’s most misunderstood - yet threatened - mammals: bats.

In this episode of Outstanding in the Field we’ll be discussing tiny communities that are found on the surface of the soil in the harsh environments of cold and hot deserts. These often-overlooked communities are called biological soil crusts, or biocrusts for short, and USGS scientists at the Southwest Biological Science Center have been studying them for quite a while.

In this episode of Outstanding in the Field, we take you to the swamps and coastal wetlands of Louisiana, the land of bayous and beignets and a state with one of the most dynamic coastlines in the United States. The wetlands that make up the Louisiana coast are vast and help protect important cultural and natural resources. Here we learn about how USGS plays a key role in monitoring coastal wetlands through the Coastwide Reference Monitoring System or CRMS.

In this episode of Outstanding in the Field, we are talking about beaches in a place that most people probably would not think of—the Grand Canyon. USGS scientists at the Southwest Biological Science Center’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center in Flagstaff, Arizona are looking at how a dam and vegetation are making things difficult for the beaches in Grand Canyon.

In this episode of Outstanding in the Field, you will learn about the one-of-a-kind native fish species that call the Grand Canyon segment of the Colorado River home and the USGS science that is characterizing the past and present conditions of the Colorado River to understand the impacts to fish populations.

In this episode of Outstanding in the Field, you will learn about the USGS’s efforts to track frog populations and identify invasive frog species in the southeast United States by listening to the chorus of frog calls. 

In this episode of Outstanding in the Field, we’ll be talking about chronic wasting disease, or CWD, a fatal and contagious wildlife disease that affects animals in the deer family and is of great concern in North America. USGS science is helping wildlife managers across the U.S. address this ominous disease.

This episode of Outstanding in the Field is our first to highlight USGS science along the Colorado River as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Powell Expedition, an exploration of the Green and Colorado Rivers that ended in the Grand Canyon.  In this episode we’re talking about citizen science and getting the public involved in the scientific process of monitoring aquatic insects in the Colorado River near the Glen Canyon Dam. Citizen science efforts aren’t new; but, in this case, the results changed how part of a world-famous river flowed for a summer in 2018. 

This episode's buzz is all about pollinators, the birds, bees, bats, beetles, and other animals that feed on pollen from plants and help bring about one in three bites of food to our plates. Pollinators are crucial contributors to our environment and society by enhancing plant diversity in wild lands and providing food for humans in agricultural settings. Some three-fourths of all native plants in the world require pollination by an animal, most often an insect, and most often a native bee.