News

"We are proud of our role as one of the primary federal agencies that worked hard with many others to help save billions of dollars in flood damage in the Pacific Northwest during last year’s flooding," said Dr. Robert Hirsch, Chief Hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in testimony today (Mar. 4, 1997) before the House Subcommittee on Water and Power.

Since the devastating floods of 1972 that took nearly 500 lives, the human toll has declined in the United States, thanks in part to advances in science and technology as well as better partnerships among local, state and federal agencies working together to provide advance warnings to citizens.

LECTURE: -- "LIVING WITH GEOLOGIC HAZARDS IN SAN MATEO COUNTY" WILL BE THE SUBJECT OF THE NEXT U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY’S FREE PUBLIC LECTURE.

China and Indonesia suffered the deadliest and most destructive earthquakes in 1996, while the U.S. remained relatively quiet according to scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior. The last deadly earthquake in the U.S. was the 1994 Northridge, Calif., quake that took 60 lives.

A half-million-year record of some deep-water cousins of crabs called ostracodes provides some of the strongest evidence yet that global climate change can reduce the variety of life forms on Earth, according to a report released Thursday (Feb. 13, 1997).

"There is mounting evidence that Mars is a water-rich planet that may have experienced warmer climates, and therefore, life, in the past,"according to Michael Carr, an astrogeologist with the U.S.Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

A special symposium, "Integrating Watershed Ecosystem Studies for Improved Natural Resource Management" will be presented in Seattle, WA, on February 15 as part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Water quality and quantity on Earth and the possibility of water on Mars are the topics of presentations by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey at this week’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at the Seattle Convention Center.

The Clinton Administration has proposed a budget of $745.4 million for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Fiscal Year 1998 that calls for increasing the availability of water quality information, for expanding earthquake monitoring to reduce hazards and support the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, and for increasing biological science in support of federal land managers.

A suite of 51 software packages and related materials, used by the U.S. Geological Survey for hydrologic analysis and modeling, is now available for electronic retrieval through an on-line repository on the World Wide Web.

Movie buffs, who will be bombarded by a series of big-screen and "made for TV" movies about volcanoes during the next few months, may wonder what is being done to reduce the risk of a real-world disaster the next time an eruption threatens local communities or the skies above.