Unified Interior Regions

Thurston Lake and Mount Konocti, Clear Lake Volcanic Field, California.

Fires burned across California in late 2019. Fall is the state's most dangerous season for wildfires, propelled by dry and windy conditions. In recent years however, the fall fire season has been starting earlier and ending later. A series of images from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites show the Kincade Fire in northern California. This fire started on

USGS Research Scientist Ellen Goodrich-Stuart adjusts a CH4 (Methane) analyzer mounted on the eddy covariance flux tower at the Rush Ranch site at Suisun Marsh. 

Title: Sea-Level Rise, Extreme Water Levels, and Coastal Erosion ... How bad could it possibly be?

• Sea-level rise represents an unprecedented civil engineering challenge.
• Small amounts of sea-level rise can disproportionately increase the frequency of coastal flooding.
• One-third to two-thirds of the beaches in Southern California may disappear

In this video, you can hear the honks and quacks of geese and ducks ring through the air, as birds fly in every direction above a wetland. This video was captured at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in November 2019, not long after geese and ducks began to arrive to spend the winter in the California Central Valley.

2019 November Public Lecture Flyer

Sea-Level Rise, Extreme Water Levels, and Coastal Erosion ... How bad could it possibly be?

By Sean Vitousek, USGS Research Oceanographer

• Sea-level rise represents an unprecedented civil engineering challenge.
• Small amounts of sea-level rise can disproportionately increase the frequency

Dr. Nora Nieminski is a research geologist and Mendenhall Fellow at the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz, California. She is pictured here, on board Marine Vessel Bold Horizon, with a piston core sample collected from the southern Cascadia subduction zone offshore of northern California/southern Oregon. The 

This instrument, the Edgetech SB-516 or "chirp", emits acoustic signals that penetrate the sediment on the seafloor. The reflected sound is recorded and is used to create a cross-section image, or profile, of the sub-bottom.

A view of the mouth of the Klamath River where it meets the Pacific Ocean in northern California. The river runs from Oregon to California. Four dams along the Klamath are pending removal. USGS is studying coastal watershed response to dam removal, including long-term before-after/control-impact (BACI) studies.

Retrospective interview with USGS Geophysicist Susan Hough about the collapse of the Nimitz Freeway (known as the Cypress Structure) in Oakland, CA, during the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and how the first responders reacted to the event.
 

Retrospective interview with USGS Geophysicist Susan Hough about her early earthquake work during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The interview covers how the Cypress Structure collapse in Oakland, CA, served as a site response study for seismic research.