Multimedia Gallery

Mule deer are an important part of the Western landscape and are coveted among big-game hunters throughout the country. These animals draw outdoor enthusiasts to states, such as Wyoming, where nearly 800,000 people hunted, fished, and viewed wildlife, and contributed $1.1 billion to the state’s economy. Balancing a growing infrastructure in the west that includes housing

Mike Poland, Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, describes activity at Yellowstone during the month of July 2019.

Satellite imagery shows the rupture and shifting of land near Ridgecrest, CA from the July 2019 earthquakes.
 

US Navy Captain Paul Dale discusses the collaborative efforts between the USGS and Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake after the Ridgecrest earthquake sequence. 
 

Science is done by those who "do." Thank you women in science for all your contributions to USGS and the sciences, as a whole.
 

Before landing on the surface of the moon in 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin needed a training ground that matched their destination's cratered surface.

In the U.S., that turned out to be northern Arizona. Starting in 1967, the U.S. Geological Survey used hundreds of pounds of dynamite to blast holes into the surface of ancient lava fields south of

A Landsat satellite image captured the flooding in Dell Rapids, SD in the Spring of 2019. It's remarkably similar to an aerial photograph of flooding 50 years earlier. 
 

Mike Poland, Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, describes activity at Yellowstone during the month of June, 2019.
 

The Marsh Arabs of southeastern Iraq have spent millennia traversing the waterways at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The recent history of those wetlands, however, has been one of forced loss and uneven recovery. 

The marshes once stretched across nearly 5,800 square miles. This Landsat 5 image from 1986 shows lush vegetation and dark waters both

Mike Poland, Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, describes activity at Yellowstone during the month of May, 2019.
 

Global Mapper is a software package for visualizing, analyzing, manipulating, and exporting a wide variety of GIS data. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to open LiDAR point cloud LAS data files in Global Mapper, turn on all or specific LiDAR point Classes, visualize the data in 2-D and 3-D, and change the visualization using toolbar functions.
 

USGS Storm Tide Sensors are specialized scientific instruments used to measure the depth and duration of storm surge during coastal storms. The data these sensors collect before, during and after a storm will help public officials assess storm damage, and improve computer models used to forecast storm surge and coastal change. FEMA and other federal, state and local

USGS scientists are studying water-quality conditions and harmful algal blooms—known as HABs—in Owasco, Seneca and Skaneateles lakes in New York. The USGS monitoring effort will provide a better understanding of HAB growth and severity and allow for near instantaneous detection of changing water-quality conditions that might be indicative of HAB development. This will

Scientists with the USGS Yellowstone Volcano Observatory use satellite and aerial imagery to map hot springs, geothermal vents, and geysers at Yellowstone National Park. They recently found an entirely new thermal area miles from the nearest trailhead. Landsat 8's thermal infrared sensors captured the change in a nighttime image from April of 2017. Aerial images reveal a

A short video on why the ocean is salty.

A short video on information related to coral reefs and the USGS.

A short video on how carbon can get into the atmosphere. 

What is water up to? Keeping the pulse on the Nation’s streams - USGS Streamgaging and the Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program.
 

Story Items in order:

1. [Photo of Broken Arch in Arches National Park with a heart shape drawn around the arch.]
   Text reads: PLEASE...Don't break our Arch (crying, laughing face emoji)
2. [Photo of a lava arch eruption that is duplicated and flipped to look like a heart shape].
   Text reads: We LAVA you! No it didn't actually do this (smile face

This video is an introduction to the partnership between the USGS Arizona Water Science Center and the Arizona Department of Transportation, or ADOT, as it is referred to throughout the video. These two agencies are working together, using cutting edge technology and methods, to understand how flood flows interact with and impact critical infrastructure. These data will

This video is an introduction to the partnership between the USGS Arizona Water Science Center and the Arizona Department of Transportation, or ADOT, as it is referred to throughout the video. These two agencies are working together, using cutting edge technology and methods, to understand how flood flows interact with and impact critical infrastructure. These data will

The 2018 Kīlauea Volcano eruption marked the first time the federal government used Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to assist in an eruption response in the United States. The UAS were used to survey areas otherwise inaccessible or too hazardous for field crews or manned aircraft, collect multiple types of data, and provide 24/7 real-time situational awareness at Kīlauea

The 2018 Kīlauea Volcano eruption marked the first time the federal government used Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to assist in an eruption response in the United States. The UAS were used to survey areas otherwise inaccessible or too hazardous for field crews or manned aircraft, collect multiple types of data, and provide 24/7 real-time situational awareness at Kīlauea

This short video provides a quick demonstration of the Point Sample using the Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AρρEEARS). 

AppEEARS provides a simple and efficient way to subset, transform, and visualize geospatial data distributed from a variety of federal archives. The following topics are discussed in the video: how to submit a

Biography of scientist featured in Circular 1443 about STEM and related careers in USGS, to be used for recruitment into STEM careers.
 

EarthExplorer helps users get to exactly the scenes they want. The Additional Criteria tab helps users pick scenes that meet specific requirements. 

This video will show you how to utilize the Additional Criteria tab in EarthExplorer.

You can find additional videos on tools and types of imagery available on this website: 

Unlike the South Pole, the geographic North Pole does not lie on a land mass. The Earth’s northern axis of rotation is in the Arctic Ocean, covered by shifting sea ice.

Landsat does not image the North Pole, which makes it an imperfect investigative tool for the detection of Santa’s workshop. 

It does, however, collect imagery over North Pole, Alaska, a small

In the 5th edition of Earth as Art, we continue to display the Earth as our eyes cannot see it—in creative combinations of visible and infrared light. 

These unreal views of farmland, coastlines, and snowscapes remind us of the powerfully artistic qualities of Earth’s land features.

Download these images for free at 

Lake Meredith National Recreation Area takes its name from the water body it surrounds in the Texas Panhandle. The Amarillo-area lake sees more than a million visitors a year.

Visitor numbers were much smaller just a few years ago. More than a decade of drought shrank water levels at Lake Meredith until a rush of rain in 2017 brought a turnaround.

Each week,

Route 66 was established in November 1926. Named “The Mother Road” by John Steinbeck, the route is a cultural icon of America, symbolizing mobility and freedom.

We mark the route with this satellite mosaic and a combination of historical aerial photos and current aerial imagery from the USGS EROS Center archive.

Each week, the Earth Resources Observation and

Antarctica’s interior is circled by glacial ice flows that move outward from the frozen continent’s surface.

Imagery collected over Antarctica by satellites like Landsat is typically marked by highly reflective snow and ice, but isolated pockets of wind-swept glacial ice glow with a distinct blue.

Each week, the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS)

Satellites have captured views of the numerous major fires burning in California.

An image acquired on November 9, 2018, from NASA’s MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite shows smoke pouring out of two major fires, the Camp Fire and the Woolsey Fire, which both ignited the day before.

In the north, the Camp Fire quickly became the deadliest wildfire in the

Another large iceberg recently broke off Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica. According to the U.S. National Ice Center, this iceberg, named B-46, has an area of 87 square miles. That’s slightly larger than the iceberg that previously separated from the glacier in September 2017.

B-46 broke away on October 29, 2018, just a month after a rift first appeared. The October

In September 2011, the largest dam removal project in U.S. history began. 

Two dams built on the Elwha River in the early 1900s created two reservoirs in northwestern Washington. They also greatly reduced the amount of sediment flowing to the river’s delta and blocked salmon migration upstream into Olympic National Park.

Each week, the Earth Resources

USGS/EROS Physical Scientist Dean Gesch and USGS/EROS CoNED Applications Project Chief Jeff Danielson discuss the Coastal National Elevation Database (CoNED), its acquisition and its uses.
 

USGS/EROS Physical Scientist Dean Gesch and USGS/EROS CoNED Applications Project Chief Jeff Danielson discuss different remote sensing methods they used to create topobathemetric elevation models of the Majuro Atoll.
 

Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on October 10, 2018.

Landsat 7 images captured before and after highlight the destructive path of the Category 4 storm.

Mexico Beach was all but demolished, with homes left in heaps by wind and storm surge. The green leaves that pop in the September image are stripped from trees by October, and the dull

October 16, 2018, marks the two-year anniversary of the Cottonwood Fire in western South Dakota. The fire consumed a large swath of grassland near the community of Wall and just north of Badlands National Park.

Thanks to low relative humidity, and high winds and temperatures, the fire spread quickly. It burned 41,360 acres by the time it was 100 percent contained

In southern Germany, autumn is synonymous with beer.

Around six million people visit the Bavarian city of Munich each year for Oktoberfest, a celebration of suds that coincides with the hops harvest.

The world’s largest continuous hops-growing region by area is Hallertau, just north of Munich. More than 80 percent of Germany’s hops come from this 42,000-acre

Hurricane Florence hit the Carolina coast on September 14, 2018, but it took much longer for the full impact to emerge.
Remotely-sensed images show the slow devastation that 13 trillion gallons of rain can bring as it moves back toward the sea.
Each week, the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center highlights a new satellite image(s) featuring

The Galapagos Islands, isolated in the eastern Pacific Ocean, lie about 1,000 km off the coast of Ecuador.

This Landsat 8 mosaic combines four images from March of 2015. The islands were formed by volcanoes, some of them still active. Volcanic craters and lava flows dominate the islands along with dense green vegetation.

Each week, the Earth Resources

On September 25, 2018, a team of three scientists based at the USGS–Cascades Volcano Observatory conducted the first-ever USGS-led Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) campaign at Mount St. Helens. The UAS survey was conducted with the permission and coordination of the U.S. Forest Service Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

The team used a multi-rotor UAS (“

On September 25, 2018, a team of three scientists based at the USGS–Cascades Volcano Observatory conducted the first-ever USGS-led Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) campaign at Mount St. Helens. The UAS survey was conducted with the permission and coordination of the U.S. Forest Service Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

The team used a multi-rotor UAS (“

For this native South Dakotan, a love for math and a college trip to EROS in Sioux Falls, SD led to overseeing USGS's Landsat operations including the upcoming 2020 launch of Landsat 9. Read Jennifer's story and other #womeninscience stories at https://bit.ly/2D1RHk5

Ponderosa pine forests in the Black Hills of South Dakota are the focus of this week’s USGS Image of the Week.

Mountain pine beetles are about the size of a grain of rice, so of course we can’t see them from space in satellite images. What is visible is what the beetles can do to a pine forest. The washed-out pink color indicates large areas of standing dead or

Many lakes in South Dakota’s Prairie Pothole Region are expanding. 

Lake Thompson in eastern South Dakota is one that has displayed remarkable change in recent decades.

Each week, the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center highlights a new satellite image(s) featuring striking changes in the Earth's surface. Our images come from locations

USGS Hydrologist Molly Maupin and USGS Research Physical Scientist Gabriel Senay discuss how Landsat imagery has been used by the National Water Census and in studying water use trends.