Multimedia Gallery

Maintenance of high quality ShakeAlert sensor, power and telemetry station in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.

Maintenance of a high-quality ShakeAlert sensors, power and telemetry stations in Portland, OR.

Data show that use of saline groundwater has been increasing since 1985.

Source: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Brackish water desalination facility in Harlingen, Texas. The plant was built in 2007 and has a capacity of 2.25 million gallons per day. Source: North Cameron Regional Water Supply Corporation

Groundwater Desalination Facilities. Source: Mickley & Associates, written commun., 2013. Survey of municipal desalination plants.

Total Saline Groundwater Use, 2010

Unlined brine pit on the shore of Skiatook Lake, Okla.
(Source: USGS Toxic Substances Hydrology Program)

Salt impacted field.
(Source: Colorado State University Extension, Fact Sheet No. 0.521)

Development of geothermal saline groundwater into a warm-spring spa.
(Source: State of Florida Department of Natural Resources. Special Publication No. 21, 1977)

Seawater Intrusion Figure. (Source: USGS Circular 1262)

Brackish groundwater movement figure. (Source: USGS Circular 1262)

Map of United States in Late Cretaceous Time (66 to 100 million years ago).(Source: USGS Bulletin 1291)

Map of United States in Middle Pennsylvanian Time (about 300 million years ago). (Source: USGS Bulletin 1291)

Salt Deposits (Gypsum). (Source: Siim Sepp, http://www.sandatlas.org/)

Groundwater in basin-fill aquifers of the Southwest often increases in dissolved-solids content as it travels along its flow path as a result of geochemical interactions with the aquifer matrix and through evaporative processes. At the end of its flowpath, groundwater may be brackish or saline and discharges to the surface through springs such this one in Death Valley

Artesian Well, John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, Key Largo, FL

Water census focal area studies button

Water Census Streamflow button

USGS gage 01428000 Tenmile River at Tusten, NY

USGS gage 01419500 Willowemoc Creek near Livingston Manor, NY

The beach-dependent shorebirds project at the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center models current and future habitat availability for nesting shorebirds in an effort to map current and likely future habitat availability on a range of sites along the U.S. Atlantic coast. Sites include beaches with minimal human-presence, such Cedar Island shown here off of the

Bull Trout in the Flathead River (cropped)

Artesian Well (cropped), John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, Key Largo, FL

Three-dimensional model of Chimney Bluffs, New York along Lake Ontario created from low-altitude digital images collected from an unmanned aerial system (UAS).

3D Image of a multi-channel seismic (MCS) line showing gas (blue/green) migrating up through fractures in the subsurface, culminating in a 600 meter tall plume of methane gas in the water column that was captured using a Simrad EK60 split beam echo sounder.  Background bathymetry was downloaded from USGS Open-File Report 2012-1266 (

SEABed Observation and Sampling System (SEABOSS) (center image) and the MiniSEABOSS (right) designed for rapid, inexpensive, and effective collection of seabed imagery (photographs and video) as well sediment samples from the coastal/inner-continental shelf regions.  Images from coastal Massachusetts show purple algae-encrusted cobbles and boulders covered with sea-stars (

Image showing a collage of examples of multi-channel and single-channel seismic data collected by the USGS, seismic equipment deployed from a research vessel, and seismic equipment on a research vessel.  These data are critical to the CMG Program as they define the geology in marine and coastal environments.

USGS wildlife biologists holding a juvenile salt marsh harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys raviventris). The species is listed as "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Top row, left to right: Cordell Johnson (left) and Evan Dailey use the USGS R/V Fast Eddy to collect water samples. Cordell Johnson (left) and Jessie Lacy prepare to deploy a tripod holding instruments to measure water level, currents, and suspended sediment. USGS divers Jenny McKee (left) and Tim Elfers assemble the gear they will need to measure vegetation

Front cover for the publication titled "Geochemistry and microbiology of groundwater and solids from extraction and monitoring wells and their relation to well efficiency at a Federally operated confined disposal facility, East Chicago, Indiana"

NHD Twitter banner photo of lake surrounded by mountains

Stormwater runoff in the Albuquerque urban area, NMWSC

Amy Gartman waits for an X-ray diffractometer to analyze samples of hydrothermal sulfide minerals. 

Examples of sulfide minerals that occur at hydrothermal vents and are being studied by Amy Gartman: (left to right) sphalerite, an ore of zinc that often contains iron ([Zn,Fe]S); cubes of pyrite, rich in iron (FeS₂); and covellite, containing copper and sulfur (CuS).The pyrite cubes are a little more than half an inch on a side.

Mangroves grow along the outside of a playa, one of may in the Florida Bay area.

After a long day collecting cores, the team of scientists watch the sun set over the Florida Bay.

Mangroves on the outside of a playa within Florida Bay.

Mangroves on the outside of a playa within Florida Bay.

Cores were collected from various areas of thawing permafrost-peatlands in Alaska. Permafrost thaw results in ground subsidence and inundation that kills black spruce and other understory plants living on the permafrost plateau. 

Cores were collected from various areas of thawing permafrost-peatlands in Alaska. Permafrost thaw results in ground subsidence and inundation that kills black spruce and other understory plants living on the permafrost plateau. 

Thawing permafrost on various peatlands in Alaska. Permafrost thaw results in ground subsidence and inundation that kills black spruce and other understory plants living on the permafrost plateau. The black spruce forests found on permafrost plateaus are replaced with sedge- and moss-dominated bogs and fens, altering the ecosystem structure and function.

USGS Research Oceanographer Lauren Toth and Oceanographer Anastasios Stathakopoulos study a coral-reef core in the USGS’s Core Archive in St. Petersburg, Florida. Photo: Dominique Gallery, USGS.

Juga sp. snails, the molluscan intermediate host for Nanophyetus salmincola, populate the bottom of a stream bed in a south Puget Sound watershed.

Bureau of Land Management wilderness ranger Evan Worthington leads U.S. Geological Survey hydrographers John Carricaburu and Russ Miller over a canyon rim and down to Deep Creek to install a crest stage gage. USGS scientists will incorporte data from the gage into an evaluation of streamflow in the Owyhee Canyonlands. The BLM will use those analyses in their water rights

The sun rises at Mount St. Helens (pictured in the distance), with low-level clouds covering Coldwater Lake. The view is from the Coldwater Science and Learning Center, the site of the 2018 GeoGirls field camp program.

Fire Potential Index map for October 10, 2018.