Multimedia Gallery

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

Maintenance of high quality ShakeAlert sensor, power and telemetry station.
 

This video provides an introduction to new land data products from the joint National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) satellite sensor aboard the Suomi-National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP). The Suomi-NPP NASA VIIRS data products discussed in the

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

Title: What on Earth is going on at Kilauea Volcano?

• First significant summit explosions in nearly a century
• Largest summit collapse volume since at least 1800
• Voluminous fissure eruptions feeding channelized lava flow
• Unparalleled new opportunities for understanding the volcanic system

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.
 

Every year, tens of thousands of people descend upon an unforgiving windswept playa in northwestern Nevada to build a city.

Within months, the city is gone.

Burning Man is named for the wooden effigy set ablaze at the end of the weeklong celebration in the temporary metropolis of Black Rock City.

It all happens on an ancient alkali flat nestled between

A total solar eclipse darkened the skies over the United States on Aug. 21, 2017.

Fourteen states were in the path of totality, a 70-mile-wide band under which the moon fully blocked the sun for just under three minutes.

Oshkosh, a town in the Nebraska Sandhills was a prime location for viewing the eclipse. This Landsat 7 image shows the town at 11:33 a.m.

This short video provides a quick look at the Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AppEEARS). AppEEARS provides a simple and efficient way to subset, transform, and visualize geospatial data distributed from a variety of federal archives. AppEEARS can be accessed by visiting https

This video provides an overview of the different indirect measurement methods used by the USGS, as well as a brief description of what you'll need to survey for each. 
 

Landsat 8 captured satellite views of California’s largest wildfire on record in the summer of 2018. The Mendocino Complex Fire in northern California is a combination of two fires: the Ranch Fire and the River Fire. 

Both fires started July 27, and hot, dry, windy conditions caused them to spread rapidly. Landsat 8 imaged the area the day before the fires broke out

The Markup Application is a web-based mapping communication tool that allows users to suggest edits, or “markups”, to the National Hydrography Dataset, or NHD, Watershed Boundary Dataset, or WBD, and High Resolution National Hydrography Dataset Plus, or NHDPlus High Res.
 

The Landsat archive has added its 8 millionth scene. 

This stunning image was captured by Landsat 8 on July 28, 2018. It shows the coastline of Nordaustlandet, the second-largest island in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.

Most of the island is covered by massive white ice caps. The exposed rocky coast appears in reddish brown, peppered with blue and black lakes

Title: Iron Mountain, California: An Extreme Acid Mine Drainage Environment

• "The world's most acid water" — explaining negative pH
• Colorful mineral salts that store metals and acidity in underground mine workings
• Microbial iron oxidation and formation of pipe scale in the water treatment system
• Challenges and successes of

Landsat sensor technology has come a long way since the days of the Return Beam Vidicon cameras on the first three Landsat satellites. Known as the RBV, it wasoriginally intended to be the satellites’ primary sensor. But the Multispectral
Scanner, or MSS, became the more stable and superior instrument.

Each week, the Earth Resources Observation and Science (

Torrential rainfall swamped western Japan in July of 2018. The rain caused mudslides that flooded cities, damaged buildings and rattled the
nation’s infrastructure. More than 170 people died.

At the USGS EROS Center, we study land change, operate the Landsat satellites, and maintain the longest, continuously acquired collection of images of the Earth's land

Researchers start drilling an ice core in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Black rats were unintentionally introduced to Hawai’i in the late 1800s, most likely as hitchhikers on trading vessels. Since their introduction, they have disrupted native ecosystems by destroying native plants, eating native arthropods, and depredating bird nests. Black rats have contributed to population declines and species extinctions of Hawaiian forest birds, and

Black rats were unintentionally introduced to Hawai’i in the late 1800s, most likely as hitchhikers on trading vessels. Since their introduction, they have disrupted native ecosystems by destroying native plants, eating native arthropods, and depredating bird nests. Black rats have contributed to population declines and species extinctions of Hawaiian forest birds, and

Lava oozes from a small breakout near Bryson's 

This series of images from June 13 through July 7, 2018, show dramatic down-dropping of part of Kīlauea Volcano's summit caldera floor. For weeks,

This video describes the survey requirements for indirect measurements with multiple components, like flow going through a culvert and over a road on top of the culvert at the same time.