Images

At the USGS, we monitor our nation’s water. Our data informs many people, from kayakers to water managers. Gage Greatness allows any Instagram user to vote for their favorite gage (data collection station).

Screenshot from Water Data for the Nation video on "How to make a current conditions table using new state pages and My Favorites list"

Water Data for the Nation: How to Show Daily Values on Monitoring Location Pages video thumbnail

USGS hydrologic technician Fred Brogan holds an acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) while measuring the highest flow measured to-date on Hurricane Creek at Hurricane, WV. Photo by Logan Jarrell, USGS Hydrologic Technician

Thumbnail of Introductory slide for USGS Water Resources Mission Area public webinar, NWISWEB Decommission – Campaign 1.

Thumbnail image for the Water Resources Mission Area National Water Availability Assessment Release

Graphs showing water-year total precipitation and air temperatures in the Lower Colorado River Basin from 1896 to 2019, units modified from millimeters to inches of precipitation and from degrees Celsius to degrees Fahrenheit from: Tillman, F.D., Gangopadhyay, S., and Pruitt, T., 2020, Trends in recent historical and projected climate data for the Colorado River Bas

U.S. River Conditions, October to December 2024 thumbnail image. The river conditions shown range from the driest condition seen at a gage (red open circles) to the wettest (blue closed circles). A purple outer ring around a gage indicates it is flooding. 

Pie chart showing proportions of major water uses (Agricultural, Municipal, Industrial, and Mining) in Arizona, USA, in 2015

Cinnamon teal with a GPS tracking backpack that weighs 10 grams, making it much more successful in staying on longer than heavier tracking devices. 

USGS hydrologic technicians collect water-quality samples on the Mississippi River (USGS monitoring location 322023090544500 Mississippi River Above Vicksburg at Mile 438, MS). 

The three Integrated Water Availability Assessment products are designed to be interdependent: 

Water limitation across the lower 48 United States, shown as the average from 2010 to 2020 for each watershed (HUC12). Water limitation levels were based on the surface water supply and use index, which expresses the imbalance between surface water-supply and consumptive use.

This is a thumbnail for an animation showing the changing conditions relative to the historic record of USGS streamgages from October 1, 2023 - September 30, 2024. The river conditions shown range from the driest condition seen at a gage (red open circles) to the wettest (blue closed circles).

Large text reads, “Hydrologic Instrumentation Facility: A new era for water science and technology.” Text sits over an aerial image of the Hydrologic Instrumentation Facility (HIF), with the tree-lined Black Warrior River visible in the background.

Large text reads, “Hydrologic Instrumentation Facility: A new era for water science and technology.” Text sits over an aerial image of the Hydrologic Instrumentation Facility, with the tree-lined Black Warrior River visible in the background.

USGS national estimates of the probability for PFAS in groundwater at the depth of private drinking water supply. Read the associated USGS study at https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ado6638.

USGS national estimates of the probability for PFAS in groundwater at the depth of public drinking water supply. Read the associated USGS study at https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ado6638.

U.S. River Conditions, July to September 2024 thumbnail image. The river conditions shown range from the driest condition seen at a gage (red open circles) to the wettest (blue closed circles). A purple outer ring around a gage indicates it is flooding.   

Schematic diagram of water flow for conventional flotation processing of copper ores from Bleiwas, D.I., 2012, Estimated water requirements for the conventional flotation of copper ores: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2012–1089, 13 p., available at https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/ofr20121089

USGS Hydrologic Technician Pamela Loftin looks on at the aftermath of severe flooding on Pigeon River in Newport, Tennessee. USGS crews were onsite October 1 to measure high-water marks to determine how high the flood waters reached at this location. Photo by Logan Combs, USGS.