Unified Interior Regions

Properly assessing the impacts of powerful storms associated with El Nino which have brought unprecedented erosion to the United States’ west coast is an enormous task. NASA , the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are combining efforts to provide public officials with the tools they need to accurately assess coastal erosion.

Dr. Milton Friend, director of the USGS National Wildlife Health Center, has been named by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to serve as chairman of the Salton Sea Science Subcommittee.

Southern California is not likely to experience a "huge earthquake,"according to two scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Although the San Andreas fault near Parkfield, Calif., has not yet produced a predicted magnitude-6 earthquake, geodetic measurements now indicate that fault movements near Parkfield sped up in 1993, according to U.S. Geological Survey scientist Evelyn Roeloffs.

Earthquakes, as well as heavy rains, can cause landslides, but with the completion of a new U.S. Geological Survey mapping project, scientists and planners can see where those landslides might be triggered by southern California’s next large earthquake.

Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt today was joined by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo in announcing a long-term lease that will keep the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in its historic Menlo Park, Calif., location. USGS Acting Director Tom Casadevall joined Babbitt and Eshoo for the announcement at an all-employees meeting at the Menlo Park campus.

Many of the tarballs washing up on the shores of Monterey Bay are most likely from natural seeps from the floor of Monterey Bay and the continental shelf, rather than from ruptured oil tankers and other man-made occurrences, according to scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

PUBLIC LECTURE: "Natural History of Coastal Redwoods -- Fire, Floods and Fog," is the subject of the U.S. Geological Survey’s FREE Public Lecture on THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1998. 

As heavy rains continue to pound northern and central California, hydrologists with the U.S. Geological Survey are reporting small stream flooding from Ventura County on the south to Eureka on the north.

A light earthquake, preliminary magnitude 4.1 according to the U.S. Geological Survey, occurred at 3:02 PM EST (12:02 PM local time) Monday, Dec 29, 1997. The epicenter is located 5 miles SE of Mammoth Lakes, or 33 miles WNW of Bishop, CA. 

A striking full-color map showing permafrost and ground ice over the Arctic and surrounding continental land masses has been released by the U.S. Geological Survey and will be displayed at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco this week.