Science Snippets

Male bighorn sheep have spectacular horns, making them popular among hikers, photographers and hunters. However, disease threatens the magnificence of...

Curators’ Casebook is our ongoing series in which we look at some of the curious cases USGS curators at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural...

Coastal ecosystems, like wetlands, may be smaller in size when compared to say, a forest, but they have the ability to sequester more carbon per unit...

Scientifically speaking, sequestration refers to the capture and storage of an element, like carbon, in the environment.   

Conversion of agricultural lands to wetland and native prairie greatly enhanced the quality of water resources, increased groundwater recharge and...

These water-dwelling plants are found in aquatic ecosystems, including wetlands.

Soil is more than just a substrate we walk on

A new paper from the USGS and Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History documents some of the first scientific descriptions and names given to...

Far underground, in a Wyoming well-bore drilled through rock and coal, exciting research is bubbling up. USGS researchers are studying how bacteria...

There’s an old saying that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. At the USGS, we’re taking another look at old mine waste and tailings to see if...