Videos

This is an animation showing the changing conditions of USGS streamgages from April 1, 2021 to June 30, 2021. The river conditions shown range from the driest condition seen at a gage (red open circles) to the wettest (blue closed circles). A purple outer ring indicates it is flooding.

Title: Mount St. Helens Revisited: Lives Changed, Lessons Learned, and Legacies of the 1980 Eruptions

By Carolyn Driedger, USGS Hydrologist & Outreach Specialist

A 1.1 mile long 509 foot tall concrete dam spanning the Blue Nile River is set to become the largest hydropower plant in Africa.

Join USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory retired geologist Don Swanson on a virtual field visit to an exposure of the Keanakāko‘i Tephra near the summit of Kīlauea as part of Volcano Awareness Month.

The eruption in Halema`uma`u crater, at the summit of Kilauea, is no longer active. The lava lake that was active between December 2020 and May 2021 remains solidified at the surface. A routine summit overflight observed no signs of residual incandescence in cracks, and only a diffuse gas plume rising from the northern portion of the lake.
 

Welcome to the "The I Am A..." series. This is the eighth video in a series of USGS whiteboard animations that highlight USGS careers.

Yellowstone Volcano Observatory scientist-in-charge Mike Poland provides the YVO monthly update from the rim of Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon. The V-shaped gorge tells an amazing geologic story. About half a million years ago, a large rhyolite lava flow erupted. Over time, hot water and gases heated by the magma chamber rose through faults in the lava flow.

This video shows a typical day on Mauna Loa, captured from a new webcam looking south towards the volcano. The field of view covers the summit region and much of the Northeast Rift Zone.

If you're watching this video, you're probably using a lithium battery. Smartphones, tablets and laptops all rely on lithium metal to store energy. It comes from surface mines or brine ponds, found in places like Australia, China and the United States. One of the leading sources for this increasingly valuable resource is the South American nation of Chile.

Title: Where Earthquakes Hide in the Desert: What we've learned from recent fault ruptures in the western U.S.

By Austin J. Elliott, USGS Research Geologist

This short presentation will illustrate how detailed topographic-bathymetric LiDAR data sets can be used within the USGS iRIC software package to compute detailed flow and particle tracking simulations across a range of length and time scales, including capturing the effects of local unsteadiness and turbulent mixing.

Why storm drains are essential to watershed management.
 

The area of active surface lava has diminished over the past month in Halema`uma`u crater, at the summit of Kilauea. Today, active surface lava was limited to a small pond, about 20 meters (yards) long. The pond surface was normally covered with a stationary crust, but occasionally resurfaced. This video shows crustal foundering during a resurfacing event.

The USGS Coastal Change Hazards team works to identify and address the Nation’s coastal change hazards problems.  By integrating research, technical capabilities and applications, and stakeholder engagement and communications, the Coastal Change Hazards team develops robust and accessible coastal change assessments, forecasts, and tools that help improve the lives,

The USGS Coastal Change Hazards team works to identify and address the Nation’s coastal change hazards problems.  By integrating research, technical capabilities and applications, and stakeholder engagement and communications, the Coastal Change Hazards team develops robust and accessible coastal change assessments, forecasts, and tools that help improve the lives,

The lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu crater, at the summit of Kīlauea, remains active but has diminished in area and vigor over the past month. This thermal timelapse sequence shows the changes in the lake activity over the past month. In mid-April the area of active surface lava in the lake was approximately 7.5 acres (3 hectares).

Jon Major, scientist-in-charge of the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory, provides an overview of the major volcano hazards in the Cascades, the function and responsibilities of the Cascades Volcano Observatory, and a brief synopsis of what's been going on at Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount St.

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a dye-trace assessment on May 5, 2021 along the Missouri River near Huntsdale, Missouri. The assessment helped scientists understand how larvae from the critically endangered pallid sturgeon drift downstream after hatching and how they find supportive habitat in the complex Missouri River.
 

In late March of 2021, just four miles from the edge of South Dakota's second-largest city, two wildfires sparked by human activity burned through a section of the Black Hills.

In the past, users spent 80% of their time downloading and preparing Landsat data to be processed. With Landsat in the cloud, you can get direct access to stream the Landsat archive without the need to download large amounts of files, by leveraging the Cloud Optimized Geotiff, or "COG".

It's May, the snow is melting and the roads are mostly open, so it's time for geologists, geophysicist and geochemists to head into Yellowstone to start projects they have been planning for the last several months. Next week, a field team will deploy a temporary GPS network to help “densify” the network of continuous GPS stations already in place.