Images

Adria Elskus is a USGS Scientist Emeritus.

While in Berlin for a Mars camera team meeting, Randy tries out the cockpit of a Soviet-built Mi-24 helicopter at an open house at the Luftwaffe Museum, Gatow. The radio-controlled helicopters he flies at home are much smaller and unarmed!

Randy with one of NASA’s T-38 jets used for astronaut training at Ellington Field.

Randy Kirk (right) and Astrogeology planetary geodesist Brent Archinal (left) at the controls of NASA’s Flying Guppy transport aircraft at Ellington Field.

Astrogeology Scientist Emeritus Randy Kirk with fellow Caltech-er Al, at Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, for the Europa Clipper meeting in February 2023.

Randy holds the titanium cover to the Europa Clipper electronics “vault” at the mission meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico in November 2023. The cover is engraved with the poem "In Praise of Mystery" by the U.S.

A forest trail meanders through a grove of Aspen trees in Colorado during early autumn.

Western bumble bee on a Geranium viscossium (sticky purple geranium) flower in Glacier National Park, Montana. Photo taken by USGS field crew in July 2023.

Western bumble bee on a common yarrow flower in Glacier National Park, Montana. Photo taken by USGS field crew in July 2023. 

Figure 4. River current velocities captured on the St. Croix River, near Franconia, Minnesota, in May 2021.

In early October, my wife Terry and I vacationed in Vermont during peak foliage. Some quick highlights include the 1,400-acre Ethan Allen Homestead in Burlington, upper treeline on Mount Mansfield, the Stowe Recreational Path, Robert Lincoln’s (Abe’s son) summer home in Manchester, and all the beautiful hikes and covered bridges in the Green Mountains.

This is a map of Rocky Mountain National Park, produced by the Park Service and showing the boundaries and facilities, including roads, in the park.

Scientists reviewing data to determine instrument performance at the Algal Toxins Laboratory in Lawrence Kansas.

USGS Hydrologist Bill Eldridge answers questions following his presentation at the 2018
Western South Dakota Hydrology Conference.

Blue vane traps are one method used to collect bees in experimental study fields and are then emptied after 24 hrs. Bee tissues are undergoing analyses for pesticide residues.

In a field in northern California, seen here is a sunflower with several bees. Bees are drawn to sunflowers for several compelling reasons, and understanding this attraction sheds light on both the nature of bees and the characteristics of sunflowers.

View of the primary mound, Mound A, looking northwest. Mound A is also known as the "Bird Mound," because its original shape is believed to have been that of a bird.

Teachers take a guided walk on the Hummocks Trail, learning about the depositional features of the May 18, 1980 eruption.

Grasses in Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park Virginia

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I spent many fun and productive field seasons with colleagues and students reconstructing the environmental history of the hyperarid Atacama Desert and Pacific slope of the Andes in northern Chile. Here is a photo from our 2002 field season, with me on the far right.