Images

View of Colorado River in the Grand Canyon from overlook. Photo by Jordan Bush, ORISE participant, National USGS CASC.

The USGS partners with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to run a fish laboratory, where they run experiments to see how native and invasive fish interact. Here, biologist Drew Eppehimer transports two juvenile smallmouth bass to a new tank.

The cold never bothered our USGS scientists! They ask – do you want to collect an ice core?

The secret lives of... trees? Trees can live for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. As they grow, they add new layers of growth – or tree rings – that scientists can study to learn about the tree’s life. The width of tree rings often reflects the factor most influencing growth from one year to the next depending upon where the tree lives.

Time to get our hands dirty! Paleoclimate researchers study sediment cores, which are accumulated layers of mud and dead plant material collected in a long tube, to learn about what the climate and environment of the past was like.

All of Earth’s ecosystems are directly or indirectly impacted by humans. But landscapes where people live, work, and travel can become dominated by people, such that the built environment and people’s daily activities control major ecological processes.

Aerial view of Ucluelet, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, showing coastal mountains along the Queen Charlotte Fault zone.

The Bitterroot River in Darby, Montana taken by Roger Peterson of US Forest Service. 

Arctic Ecosystems are at the forefront of climate change and many of the ecosystem services they provide are rapidly threatened or changing.

You can find more Climate Illustrations here.

A picture of a pink flower on an Opuntia cactus, also known as a prickly pear cactus.

Staff from the Pacific Islands and Alaska CASCs meet to discuss commonalities between their two regions.

Upper Mississippi River Restoration program partners meet in the field to discuss a backwater habitat rehabilitation project in Pool 4 of the Mississippi.

A view westward from Cottonwood Pass (Sawatch Range, Colorado, USA) into the Taylor Park basin. The peaks in the backgorund are composed of igneous and metamorphic rocks ranging in age from early Paleozoic to Eocene, uplifted along the Taylor Park fault.

The USGS produces national and regional climate data sets, including downscaled climate projections, to help resource managers and local communities understand potential effects of climate change in their areas.

The USGS produces national and regional climate data sets, including downscaled climate projections, to help resource managers and local communities understand potential effects of climate change in their areas.

The grey PVC pipe is securely mounted on the river bank to house water-quality instruments. 

USGS scientist collects a water-quality sample in the Grand Canyon, Arizona. 

The moon sets over an exposure of the Great Unconformity within the Colorado National Monument (Colorado, USA). At this location, Paleoproterozoic granite (foreground) is unconformably overlain by the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation.

Virgo

Libra

Sagittarius

True to their sign, EXTREME HEAT is overly generous with the temperature, and climate change helps to feed their fiery spirit. They should never be left alone near the thermostat.