Unified Interior Regions

Early in his college career, U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Rufus Catchings became drawn to the mysteries that lie beneath the earth’s surface — and was determined to understand them. 

USGS oceanographer Juliette Finzi Hart shot 360-degree videos of king tides—the highest high tides of the year—throughout the Los Angeles region in 2016 and 2017.

Acting deputy director of the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center Nadine Golden attended a workshop on restoring a sand-mining operation on California’s Monterey Bay.

Days after fatal debris flows devastated Southern California’s Montecito community,  a team of U.S. Geological Survey geologists joined county, state, and federal partners to survey and  evaluate the aftermath.

USGS geologist Patrick Barnard spoke to the public at a “Coffee and King Tides” gathering held in Half Moon Bay, California, on December 4.

News reporters are invited to attend a reception to kick off the U.S. Geological Survey’s STEP-UP Program in Menlo Park. STEP-UP (Secondary Transition to Employment Program – USGS Partnership) provides young adults (ages 18-22) with disabilities a variety of life and job skills to enable them to transition from school to work and to live independently.

It isn't often that scientists and land managers spend two entire days together talking about volcanoes outside of an eruptive crisis, but a special FEMA training course allows them to do just that.

Coastal communities count on beaches for recreation and for protection from large waves, but beaches are vulnerable to threats such as erosion by storms and flooding. Whether beaches grow, shrink, or even disappear depends in part on what happens just offshore. How do features like shifting sandbars affect waves, currents, and the movement of sand from the beach to offshore and back?

On October 12, USGS drones collected video footage of the Mud Creek landslide, which buried California State Highway 1 under a third-of-a-mile-wide mass of rock and dirt on May 20.

On May 20, 2017, more than 2 million cubic meters of rock and dirt—enough to fill a line of dump trucks nearly a thousand miles long—collapsed down the steep slopes at Mud Creek on California’s Big Sur coast, about 140 miles south of San Francisco. A pile of rubble almost a third of a mile wide buried California State Highway 1 over 65 feet deep and added about 13 acres of new land to the coast.

California's landscape is prone to drought and warmer climates. The recent drought lasted five years (2011 – early 2017), bringing with it many environmental issues including the increased prevalence, severity, and duration of wildfires. While there used to be a distinct "wildfire season" in California, the threat of wildfire is no longer restricted to a single season.