News

Normal rainfall during April helped alleviate some of Massachusetts and Rhode Islands’ low-water conditions. But the states’ streamflows and ground-water levels still haven’t completely recovered from the small amounts of precipitation that fell this past fall and winter.

Unexploded shells. Contaminated soils. Polluted groundwater. Military bases across the country are working to restore and protect the environment. Experts from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Defense Department will meet in Indianapolis next week to discuss the status of efforts to address environmental problems at U.S. military bases and facilitate safeguarding the environment for years

While it is known that pre-Columbian peoples of North America used fire as a tool to manage natural resources, scientists have long debated the impact of this usage of fire on the landscape. 

Picture a sunset in which a "forest" of that Sonoran Desert icon the saguaro cactus is silhouetted against the skyline. Now picture that sunset minus the saguaros and you will have an idea why researchers and resource managers across southern Arizona fear the take-over of the desert by invasive nonnative grasses.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Kansas City Plant have teamed up to modernize the USGS Optical Science Laboratory (OSL) which has the responsibility to certify/characterize metric quality aerial mapping cameras for other government agencies and the private sector. 

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released today a summary report of more than 10 years of investigations on the biological resources of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in and near the 1002 Area, a region of about 1.5 million acres on the coastal plain in the northern part of the Arctic Refuge.

Coal provides more than half of our Nation’s electrical energy needs. For more than three centuries, coal has been mined in the Appalachian Basin, one of the most important coal producing regions in the world. This area includes parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Tennessee. Almost all of the coal now mined in the Appalachian Basin is used in eastern state

By using electrical measurements, USGS scientists have detected fresh groundwater in submarine environments in Mid-Atlantic coastal waters. The new data will help define sources and quantities of nutrients entering the coastal bays of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia and refine groundwater flow models.

Above the water it’s a rugged shoreline and a few jagged rocks adorned with bird droppings. Below the surface, however, the Gulf of the Farallones, west of the Golden Gate Bridge, encompasses an area of 4,000 square miles of sea floor, marine life and mysterious objects that may be affecting the area’s environment.

Since 1911, activities by numerous occupants at what is now known as the Massachusetts Military Reservation (MMR) have contaminated billions of gallons of ground water in the Cape Cod aquifer with fuels, solvents, treated sewage, landfill leachate, and explosive compounds from ordinance. 

The USGS announced today that species and habitat data profiles have been completed for New York under the Gap Analysis Program (GAP). The GAP is a scientific method of gathering broad geographic information on biological diversity that contributes to keeping common species common.