Multidisciplinary Science

Healthy fish and wildlife underpin the economic vitality, food security, recreational enjoyment, and cultural heritage of fishing and hunting in communities across the United States. Fishing and hunting resources scale from the personal recreation of families to multi-billion-dollar industries. Recognizing these critical connections, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) works to understand, protect...

The USGS Environmental Health Program seeks to understand how environmental factors, especially contaminants and pathogens, influence human health and ecosystems. It focuses on studying the distribution and effects of toxic substances, environmental stressors, and their pathways. The program prioritizes collaboration with State, Federal and local governments; Tribes; non-government organizations...

The Energy Resources Life Cycle Integrated Science Team focuses on the potential for environmental contaminant exposures that might originate from energy resource activities including extraction, production, transportation, storage, waste management, and restoration. Perceived health risks to humans and other organisms will be distinguished from actual risks, if any. If actual risks are identified...

The team studies the movement of toxicants and pathogens that could originate from the growing, raising, and processing/manufacturing of plant and animal products through the environment where exposure can occur. This information is used to understand if there are adverse effects upon exposure and to develop decision tools to protect health.

To support the Department of Interior's bureaus, states, and local communities, we are developing 1) a document highlighting remote sensing approaches that can be leveraged for site prioritization, recovery design, and long-term assessments of recovery trends, and 2) data products of vegetation conditions, change, recovery potential, and risk of exotic plant invasion on mine lands. We will...

The team studies toxicants and pathogens in water resources from their sources, through watersheds, aquifers, and infrastructure to human and wildlife exposures. That information is used to develop decision tools that protect human and wildlife health.

The team is determining the movement and behavior of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from their sources in the environment, as they move through exposure pathways in ecosystems including watersheds and aquifers, their incorporation into food webs, and molecular to population scale effects on fish and wildlife. These studies are accomplished at a variety of spatial scales from regional...

The team develops advanced methods to study factors driving algal toxin production, how and where wildlife or humans are exposed to toxins, and ecotoxicology. That information is used to develop decision tools to understand if ​toxin exposure leads to adverse health effects in order to protect human and wildlife health.

A group of scientists investigated per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in watersheds on Cape Cod and identified a unique signature for aqueous film forming foams (AFFF) from legacy firefighting and fire training. A combination of statistical modeling and laboratory measurements indicates that unidentified organofluorine constitutes a large fraction of PFAS in the river systems that...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and academic scientists partnered to identify challenges and provide considerations for future scientific study designs to advance our understanding of the often subtle sublethal effects of contaminants on individuals, populations, communities, and entire aquatic food webs.

The public is concerned that uranium in natural geologic formations, mine tailings, dusts, water, and other geologic materials can pose a health hazard to humans and wildlife. Our specialized teams of hydrologists, chemists, and geologists working together at a field site in the Grand Canyon region of the United States have shown: Elevated uranium concentrations (above the drinking water standard)...

Science from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other entities has shown that a mixture of natural and synthetic estrogens and other similar chemicals are discharged from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to streams and rivers.