Images

USGS scientist dissecting a fish to determine possible effects from exposure to endocrine disrupting contaminants.

The set up and equipment used for the bioaugmentation experiment at a fractured-rock contamination site. The site is contaminated with trichloroethene (TCE). The bladders contain the solutions that were injected into the subsurface. The injection well is right in front of the blue barrel.

USGS scientist dissecting a summer flounder.  Science Feature that the image was used on was Pesticides Common in California Estuary

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientist Dr. Diann J. Prosser examining a ruddy shelduck in China. Dr. Diann J. Prosser was awarded the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

Deposit of iron-cemented stream gravel (ferricrete) with embedded wood fragments that can be age dated using radiocarbon to determine the age of the ferricrete deposit. Knowing the age of the ferricretes helps scientists determine if the associated enrichment of metals in streams occurred before or after mining in the watershed started.

Mineral Creek watershed in southwestern Colorado has natural and mining-related sources of contamination. In the background of this photo is a large naturally occurring seep that discharges acidic, metal-rich water to a tributary of Mineral Creek.

Scientists collecting samples of runoff from a test plot during a simulated rainfall event. The field received an application of biosolids, and the runoff samples were analyzed for organic chemicals that are commonly used in our everyday lives.

A USGS researcher uses an ASTM-approved vacuum to collect house dust for analysis.

Dr. David S. Blehert working in a laboratory

USGS scientist takes a sample from a northern pintail duck (Anas acuta) to be tested for avian influenza. 

Early life stage white sturgeon swimming in a laboratory tank.

A USGS scientist prepares a tracer solution in a gas-tight bladder that will be pumped into a zone of nitrate-containing groundwater to monitor the production and consumption of nitric oxide dissolved in groundwater.

Single-well tracer tests involve injecting a tracer solution into one port of a multilevel sampling well, creating a tracer cloud in the groundwater, and then monitoring the water chemistry in the tracer cloud from the same well as the tracer cloud moves away from the well.

USGS researcher Jennifer Agee taking surface sediment oxidation-reduction and pH measurements at Crissy Marsh, a vegetated saltmarsh near the Golden Gate Bridge (background) in San Francisco, CA. Photographer: L. Windham-Myers.

USGS employee showing the rhizosphere (root zone) of a wetland plant, which is a critical zone for microbiological and biogeochemical processes.

USGS researchers collect samples of dust from a sealcoated parking lot for analysis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).  PAH concentrations in dust swept from coal-tar-sealcoated parking lots are 100s to 1000s of times higher than those swept from parking lots with other types of surfaces.

Left Image: Managed wetland at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Preserve (California Central Valley) showing mixed flocks of foraging birds. Photographer: M. Marvin-DiPasquale.

Driveways in an upscale residential subdivision in Lake in the Hills, Ill., are coated with black coal-tar-based sealcoat, contrasting with the white cement sidewalk.

Sealcoat particles abraded from a parking lot with coal-tar-based sealcoat collect by the curbside.  Also shown is a storm drain, half coated with sealcoat, down which the loose particles will be washed by runoff.

A driveway in an upscale residential community in the Lake in the Hills, Ill, is coated with coal-tar-based sealcoat.  The driveway has a basketball hoop and a skateboard ramp.

Photograph of iron(III) oxyhydroxides (yellow-brown color in two left-hand tubes collected on folded filter paper) that was produced in iron(II)-containing groundwater by the addition of nitrate. The tube on the right is a filter collected from the same groundwater before nitrate was added.