Images

Rock Creek at Sherrill Drive, Washington, DC; staff gage.

Summer Intern Tyler Choe cleaning the sediment out of the beaker.

Summer Intern Zachary Auman seeing the solutions for the sediment in the graduated cylinder.

View of Patuxent Lake.

Big Darby Creek is near Lake Darby, Ohio. Find out about the water quality of this stream and others in the Midwest studied by the Midwest Stream Quality Assessment.

Minnesota Valley Creek Ditch near Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge flows through intensively row-cropped agricultural land. Find out more about this and other agricultural streams sampled by the USGS Midwest Stream Quality Assessment.

Localized flooding on Hidewood Creek near Estelline, SD, on June 23, 2013. Severe storms during June 21-22, 2013, in eastern South Dakota resulted in high flows in several streams across the area. The peak discharge on Hidewood Creek (streamgage 06479640) from this storm event was about 4,200 cubic feet per second.

Water Resources Monitoring Site at Castle Creek

Field visit for data collection at Paul Spring Branch, Fairfax County, Virginia

Flood waters of the Missouri River and its tributaries cause road closures.

This ledge outcrop serves as the control at the USGS station on the Mousam River near West Kennebunk, Maine.

Woody debris is picked up and carried downstream by the rising waters of the Missouri River in Jefferson City, Missouri.

A USGS hydrologist and hydrologic technician install a microsampler in an urban creek in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The microsampler allows collection of a sample "sip" every 6 hours; the sips are composited into a daily sample. Collection of daily samples revealed the presence of more pesticides and higher concentrations than manual samples collected weekly.

Collection of a suspended-sediment sample by hydrologic technicians at U.S. Geological Survey station 08185000 Cibolo Creek at Selma, Texas, on May 25, 2013.

Johnson County water intake weir on the Kansas River.

Cold-water adapted macroinvertbrates like these are good indicators for the health of an ecosystem.

In 2013, installation of macroinvertebrate sampling devices at seven sites on the Silver Creek Preserve. The sampling devices provide artificial substrate that aquatic insects such as mayflies, caddisflies, and stoneflies can colonize.

Before The Nature Conservancy established the Silver Creek Preserve, the watershed had been degraded by years of livestock grazing and overfishing. Preserve managers have been concerned about sedimentation, increasing stream temperatures, and invasive species.

USGS, Nature Conservancy, Idaho Fish and Game, and other volunteers collect fish on the Silver Creek Preserve near Picabo, Idaho.

Hester Dendy™ samplers like this one provide artificial substrate that aquatic insects can colonize.

Collection and comparison of pre- and post-restoration samples to assess how well the insects adapt to restoration efforts.