Images

The USGS Water Resources Mission Area will assess water availability based on these core components of water supply and demand. 

Regional water availability assessment basins, as of 2023. USGS is conducting regional water availability assessments in medium-sized watersheds throughout the US.  These assessments are designed to capture a range of conditions in major drivers of water availability.

USGS Scientist Brendan Foster taking and sealing an algal sample on a dock at Lake Anna, Virginia.

Image of pipettors used in the laboratory. Pipettes are stored on charging docking stations. 

Conceptual illustration showing how USGS's Next Generation Water Observing System will enhance the spatial and temporal monitoring of water within reference basins and larger hydrologic regions in all U.S. states and territories.

Eared grebes in a courtship behavior in the Great Salt Lake. They are one of many migratory birds in the Great Basin that rely on terminal lakes and wetlands in the area to stop rest and feed. 

A split-panel map of Salt Lake City, Utah, highlighting the Great Salt Lake, shows 2006 Landsat imagery on the left side panel and 2006 NLCD, with colorized legend of land use classes, on the right. The animation displays a slider being used to switch between the two different datasets, revealing the land cover classes shown in Landsat imagery.

Thumbnail image for a short video on the importance of USGS gages. This image shows three unique photos of USGS gages.

Image shows equipment for analysis of targeted and non-targeted organic contaminants at the OGRL located at the KS WSC. 

Stacked bar chart of 1990-2019 agriculture, domestic, and industry freshwater withdrawals in the U.S., estimated by the World Bank. In all years, industry withdraws the most freshwater, followed by agriculture and domestic. From 2006 to 2010, industrial water dropped 5,000 cubic kilometers, then remained low.

Animation of five satellite images of the Tanana River in Alaska. The imagery is colored in shades of blue to show the degree of confidence that water is present. Two scatter plots show positive pairwise relationships between satellite river elevation and satellite river width and satellite streamflow.

Six lollipop charts highlight deviations in maximum percent ice cover on the five Great Lakes (Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Lake Superior, Lake Huron, and Lake Ontario) from 1973-2023. The difference in lake ice cover is shown for each lake and across the entire system compared to the 50-year mean (1973-2023).

The Big Melt has begun; 2023 spring flows into Lake Tahoe compared to the historical record. Nine timeseries plots show daily streamflow (cubic feet per second) from March 2023 to present, highlighted in green, compared to historical record, shown in grey that date back to 1975.

A tile map of the U.S. with lollipop charts for each state that show differences in forest area magnitude, in squared kilometers, from the 35-year mean (1985-2020) across the contiguous United States (CONUS). Positive differences are shown in forest green lollipops and negative differences are shown in burnt orange lollipops.

Molly Wood at a viewpoint on the Rio Coca, Ecuador, where substantial erosion and landslides have occurred. 

Sediment deposits at the discharge outlet of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydropower facility on the Rio Coca, Ecuador. (Molly Wood, USGS)

Regressive erosion on the Rio Coca upstream of the former San Rafael waterfall site, Ecuador. (Molly Wood, USGS)

Circular calendar charts showing the projected effects of climate change on the onset and end of spawning for the American Shad and the Striped Bass in the Hudson River Estuary, during two modeling periods: 1950 to 2012 and 2012 to 2099.

Rapid erosion of hillsides along the Rio Coca in Ecuador after collapse of a lava dam, April, 2023. (Molly Wood, USGS)

Streambank erosion on the Rio Coca after a waterfall collapse, Ecuador. (Molly Wood, USGS)

Sediment and flow monitoring station on the Rio Quijos, Rio Coca watershed, Ecuador. Rio Quijos joins Rio Salado to form Rio Coca upstream of a hydropower facility. The station is jointly operated by the Ecuador National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology and the Electric Corporation of Ecuador (CELEC). (Molly Wood, USGS)