Unified Interior Regions

The M7.3 Hebgen Lake earthquake in 1959 is one of the two the largest recorded earthquakes in the entire Intermountain West of the United States.  We might still be seeing aftershocks from that event in what today is the most seismically active area of the Yellowstone region.

Early explorers during the separate Washburn, Hayden, and Hague expeditions of the 1870s were astonished by the massive terraces and pools of hot-spring limestone, better known as travertine, at Mammoth Hot Springs—a chemical oddity that is quite different from other Yellowstone thermal areas.

Temperature significantly increased and snowfall decreased in the iconic Greater Yellowstone Area since 1950 because of climate change, and these trends will likely continue through the rest of the century, according to a climate report published today.

Federal and university partners invite members of the media to a virtual news conference next week about past and future effects of climate change on the iconic Greater Yellowstone Area.   

Standing on the boardwalk next to any of Yellowstone’s hot, steamy, vigorously bubbling hot springs, mud pots, fumaroles, or geysers, you may be struck by the sheer amount of energy that powers this system, night and day. But how long have these features been active?  To address this question, geologists can turn to the “clock” that is frozen within hydrothermal travertine deposits.

Piping plover breeding groups in the Northern Great Plains are notably connected through movements between habitats and show lower reproductive rates than previously thought, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey study. These new findings point to a need for further studies and suggest the species may show a higher extinction risk than currently presumed.
 

Fort Collins, CO – Considered one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the world and home to mule deer, pronghorn, sage-grouse, pygmy rabbits and more than 350 other species of conservation concern, the sagebrush ecosystem continues to shrink rapidly due to a host of growing threats, according to a new scientific report.

A river meanders serenely through the northern prairie, waters flowing eastward. The scene’s simplicity belies the complex nature of how the water is used—especially when the river flows from one country to another and back.

A new USGS study reports that shale-oil and -gas production from a major production area in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota has not caused widespread hydrocarbon contamination to date in nearby aquifer zones used for drinking-water supply.

SPARROW mappers are interactive tools that allow users to evaluate streamflow and nutrient and sediment conditions as well as the importance of different sources of contaminants in a selected river basin. Data can be visualized at different scales using maps and interactive graphs and tables.

A team of federal, academic, and NGO researchers conducted a national-scale assessment of mercury bioaccumulation in aquatic ecosystems using dragonfly larvae as biosentinels.