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Chris Magirl manages the USGS Science Publishing Network (SPN), a world-class science publishing team that supports USGS authors in producing high-quality publications that are clear, compelling, and always freely accessible. The SPN releases 300-400 USGS series products each year, including professional papers, scientific investigations reports, fact sheets, and circulars.
Chris was a Bureau Approving Official (BAO) in the USGS Office of Science Quality and Integrity from 2020–2025, helping USGS authors publish their science and remain policy compliant under Fundamental Science Practices. From 2015–2020, Chris was the Associate Director for Investigations at the USGS Arizona Water Science Center, disseminating high-quality hydrologic reports and data on water resources in Arizona and the Southwest. From 2000–2015, Chris was a hydrologist, research hydrologist, and project chief at the USGS, working on multiple projects involving fluvial geomorphology throughout the western United States. Chris researched rapids on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon and Cataract Canyon, the Elwha River dam-removal project, the 2014 Oso Landslide, sediment production from glaciated stratovolcanoes, and the interactions between geomorphology and aquatic ecology pertaining to salmon.
Before joining the USGS, Chris was an engineer and R&D project manager with the Hewlett-Packard Company building color inkjet printers. As a youth, Chris was fascinated with fluid mechanics and thermodynamics, thunderstorms, flash floods, airplanes, rockets, and rivers. Chris is the inventor of 5 patents and has authored or co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed papers and reports on topics ranging from directional solidification, microscopic droplet ejection, landslides, debris flows, extreme rainfall events, extreme floods, to the hydraulics of rapids—it’s all fluid mechanics, just different scales and viscosities.
USGS research ecologist Jeff Duda collects discharge data on a side channel of the Elwha River. Two large dams on the Elwha River are being incrementally removed from 2011 to 2013 to restore river function in an important salmon-bearing river.
USGS research ecologist Jeff Duda collects discharge data on a side channel of the Elwha River. Two large dams on the Elwha River are being incrementally removed from 2011 to 2013 to restore river function in an important salmon-bearing river.
USGS hydrologic technician James Foreman operates an electronic deployment reel from a bridge over the Elwha River, Washington. Two large dams on the Elwha River are being incrementally removed from 2011 to 2013 to restore river function in an important salmon-bearing river.
USGS hydrologic technician James Foreman operates an electronic deployment reel from a bridge over the Elwha River, Washington. Two large dams on the Elwha River are being incrementally removed from 2011 to 2013 to restore river function in an important salmon-bearing river.
USGS research ecologist Jeff Duda collects discharge data on a side channel of the Elwha River. Two large dams on the Elwha River are being incrementally removed from 2011 to 2013 to restore river function in an important salmon-bearing river.
USGS research ecologist Jeff Duda collects discharge data on a side channel of the Elwha River. Two large dams on the Elwha River are being incrementally removed from 2011 to 2013 to restore river function in an important salmon-bearing river.
USGS hydrologic technician James Foreman operates an electronic deployment reel from a bridge over the Elwha River, Washington. Two large dams on the Elwha River are being incrementally removed from 2011 to 2013 to restore river function in an important salmon-bearing river.
USGS hydrologic technician James Foreman operates an electronic deployment reel from a bridge over the Elwha River, Washington. Two large dams on the Elwha River are being incrementally removed from 2011 to 2013 to restore river function in an important salmon-bearing river.