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The Southwest Region includes California, Nevada, and Arizona. The Regional Office, headquartered in Sacramento, provides Center oversight and support, facilitates internal and external collaborations, and works to further USGS strategic science directions.
News
President Proposes $971.2 Million FY 2021 Budget for USGS
Budget Focuses on Bringing Science, Facilities, and Infrastructure into the 21st Century
Airplane to Make Low-Level Flights Over Parts of the Eastern Mojave Desert, California and Nevada
For about two months, starting around December 7, 2019, an airplane operated under contract to the USGS will be making low-level flights over parts of the eastern Mojave Desert.
The Ups and Downs of Groundwater Levels after the July 2019 Ridgecrest, CA Earthquakes
Effects from the two July 2019 Ridgecrest, CA earthquakes were observed in several USGS continuous groundwater-level monitoring sites in California, Nevada, and Arizona.
Publications
Aeromagnetic map of Mountain Pass and vicinity, California and Nevada
Magnetic investigations of Mountain Pass and vicinity were begun as part of an effort to study regional crustal structures as an aid to understanding the geologic framework and mineral resources of the eastern Mojave Desert. The study area, which straddles the state boundary between southeastern California and southern Nevada, encompasses Mountain...
Ponce, David A.; Ponce, David A.; Denton, Kevin M.
Earthquake potential in California-Nevada implied by correlation of strain rate and seismicity
Rock mechanics studies and dynamic earthquake simulations show that patterns of seismicity evolve with time through (1) accumulation phase, (2) localization phase, and (3) rupture phase. We observe a similar pattern of changes in seismicity during the past century across California and Nevada. To quantify these changes, we correlate GPS strain...
Zeng, Yuehua; Petersen, Mark D.; Shen, Zheng-Kang
Geophysical and geologic maps of Mountain Pass and vicinity, California and Nevada
U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3412 is a series of products that consists of geophysical and geologic maps of Mountain Pass and vicinity, California. Maps A and B (red outline in above map image) are gravity and aeromagnetic maps, respectively. The map series was begun as part of an effort to study regional crustal structures...
Ponce, David A.
Nutrient Source Identification in Groundwater and Periphyton Along the Nearshore of Lake Tahoe
High concentrations of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) are responsible for excessive, or nuisance algal blooms in many ecosystems world-wide, and climate change is predicted to exacerbate the problem1,2. Excessive nutrients supplied to the nearshore zone of Lake Tahoe may have significant consequences to ecological communities, water clarity, and water quality. The nearshore zone...
Past Perspectives of Water in the West
In the intermountain west, seasonal precipitation extremes, combined with population growth, are creating new challenges for the management of water resources, ecosystems, and geologic hazards. This research contributes a comprehensive long-term context for a deeper understanding of past hydrologic variability, including the magnitude and frequency of drought and flood extremes and ecosystem...
Drivers and Impacts of North Pacific Climate Variability
Climate model forecasts indicate an increase in extreme hydrologic events, including floods and droughts, for California and the western U.S. in the future. To better understand what the consequences of this future change in climate may be, USGS scientists are studying the frequency, magnitude, and impacts of past hydroclimate variability and extremes in the region. This project produces well-...
Information by Region - Nevada
Cheatgrass and Medusahead
Invasive annual grasses, such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae), are one of the most significant stressors to rangeland ecosystems in the western U.S. Their expansion and dominance across this area are the most damaging ecosystem agents on this iconic landscape.
United States Assessments of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources
USGS Energy Resources Program provides periodic assessments of the oil and natural gas endowment of the United States and the World (click here for information about World Oil and Gas Assessments). This website provides access to new, prioritized, assessment results and supporting data for the United States, as part...
2017 Pacific Winter Floods
Learn more about USGS flood activities related to the 2017 Pacific Winter Floods caused by widespread rains across California and western Nevada.
Eastern Great Basin Oil and Gas Assessments
The U.S. Geological Survey completed the following assessments of undiscovered oil and gas potential of the Eastern Great Basin Province of eastern Nevada, western Utah, southeastern Idaho, and northwestern Arizona 5019:
- 2019 Continuous Assessment of Oil and Gas in Mississippian Delle Phosphatic Member (FS 2019-3062 ...
Magmatic-Tectonic History and Component Sources of Major Precious Metal Deposits in the Tonopah, Goldfield, and Comstock Lode Districts, NV
Project objectives are refinement of stratigraphy, structure, and magmatic-hydrothermal evolution of the Tonopah, Goldfield, and Comstock Lode districts, and determination of the sources of hydrothermal mineral components. Results are expected to include refined geologic and tectonic maps of important districts in the Walker Lane, reduced uncertainty in sources of elements in ore deposits,...
Land Treatment Exploration Tool
The Land Treatment ExplorationTool provides a practical resource for managers who are planning restoration and rehabilitation actions on public lands. The tool generates a variety of spatial products while being user friendly for all levels of GIS expertise, even to those with little or no experience.
Rare Earth Element Deposits in the Southeast Mojave Desert
In an effort to better understand domestic resource potential, the USGS is investigating the genetic relationship between rare earth element deposits at Mountain Pass, California and Music Valley (Pinto Mountains, California) and extend these studies across a 130-km long belt of alkaline Proterozoic rocks in the southeast Mojave Desert. Such a combined study would significantly improve our...
Bird Banding Laboratory
The Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) is an integrated scientific program established in 1920 supporting the collection, archiving, management and dissemination of information from banded and marked birds in North America. This information is used to monitor the status and trends of resident and migratory bird populations. Because birds are good indicators of the health of the environment, the...
These data were collected from the TOPGUN-SODA10 2AK core collected in 2010 by LacCore (University of Minnesota), the USGS. and the University of California (U.C.) Berkeley. The 8.9 meter length core had stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon sampled every 10 millimeters or so, and diatoms samples at every 50 millimeters to 200 millimeters depending on the depth in the core. mineralo
Domestic wells provide drinking water supply for approximately 40 million people in the United States. Knowing the location of these wells, and the populations they serve, is important for identifying heavily used aquifers, locations susceptible to contamination, and populations potentially impacted by poor-quality groundwater.
Beginning in November of 2015, a project was undertaken to reanalyze approximately 60,000 archived sample splits collected as part of the National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) Hydrogeochemical and Stream Sediment Reconnaissance (HSSR) project from selected areas in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. A small amount (approximately 0.25
Groundwater age distribution and susceptibility to natural and anthropogenic contaminants were assessed for selected principal aquifers of the Western United States: the Central Valley aquifer system (CVAL), the Basin and Range basin-fill aquifers (BNRF), the Rio Grande aquifer system (RIOG), the High Plains aquifer (HPAQ), the Columbia Plateau basaltic-rock aquifers (
Streamflow and basin-characteristic data are needed for a variety of scientific applications including estimation of flow in ungaged basins and hydro-ecological classification of rivers. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Southern Rockies Landscape Conservation Cooperative (SRLCC), selected a subset of streamgages across the SRLC
This data release describes micrometeorological and soil-moisture data collected from January 1, 2017 through May 31, 2019 at the Amargosa Desert Research Site adjacent to a low-level radioactive waste and hazardous chemical waste facility near Beatty, Nevada. Micrometeorological data include precipitation, solar radiation, air temperature, relative humidity, saturated and amb
This dataset is the assembled analytical results of geochemical, petrographic, and geochronologic data for samples, principally those of unmineralized Tertiary volcanic rocks, from the Tonopah, Divide, and Goldfield mining districts of west-central Nevada. Much of the data presented here for the Tonopah and Divide districts are for samples collected by Bonham and Garside (1979) du
The NWIS mapper provides access to over 1.5 million sites contained in the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS), including sites where current and historical surface-water, groundwater, springs, and atmospheric data has been collected. Users can search by site type, data type, site number, or place.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s Water Availability and Use Study Program (WAUSP) (https://water.usgs.gov/ogw/gwrp/activities/regional.html) supports quantitative assessments of groundwater availability in areas of critical importance. As part of a WAUSP study in the arid to semi-arid Northwest Volcanic Aquifer Study Area (NVASA), estimates of runoff and baseflow w
Downloadable Data for Eastern Great Basin Oil and Gas Assessments
Interactively explore assessment summary information for continuous (unconventional) assessments conducted at the USGS from 2000-2018. The assessment results data used to generate this visualization can be downloaded here in Excel Format. These data represent all assessment results for Continuous Assessments only from 2000-2018.
The Land Treatment Exploration Tool is designed for resource managers to use when planning land treatments. The tool provides useful summaries of environmental characteristics of planned treatment areas and facilitates adaptive management practices by comparing those characteristics to other similar treatments within a specified distance or area of interest. Provisional Software.
Domestic wells provide drinking water supply for approximately 40 million people in the United States. Knowing the location of these wells, and the populations they serve, is important for identifying heavily used aquifers, locations susceptible to contamination, and populations potentially impacted by poor-quality groundwater.
This map shows the provinces assessed by the USGS for undiscovered oil and gas resources.
Scientists at WERC's Dixon Field station have fitted Cinnamon Teal with GPS backpacks. Using R, the telemetry locations are displayed on an image every two weeks.
The 3DEP products and services available through The National Map consist of standard digital elevation models (DEMs) at various horizontal resolutions, elevation source and associated datasets, an elevation point query service and bulk point query service. All 3DEP products are available, free of charge and without use restrictions.
Aeromagnetic map of Mountain Pass and vicinity, California and Nevada
Magnetic investigations of Mountain Pass and vicinity were begun as part of an effort to study regional crustal structures as an aid to understanding the geologic framework and mineral resources of the eastern Mojave Desert. The study area, which straddles the state boundary between southeastern California and southern Nevada, encompasses Mountain...
Ponce, David A.; Ponce, David A.; Denton, Kevin M.
Isostatic gravity map of Mountain Pass and vicinity, California and Nevada
Gravity investigations of Mountain Pass and vicinity were begun as part of an effort to study regional crustal structures as an aid to understanding the geologic framework and mineral resources of the eastern Mojave Desert. The study area, which straddles the state boundary between southeastern California and southern Nevada, encompasses Mountain...
Ponce, David A.; Ponce, David A.; Denton, Kevin M. Geophysical and geologic maps of Mountain Pass and vicinity, California and Nevada
U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3412 is a series of products that consists of geophysical and geologic maps of Mountain Pass and vicinity, California. Maps A and B (red outline in above map image) are gravity and aeromagnetic maps, respectively. The map series was begun as part of an effort to study regional crustal structures...
Ponce, David A. Earthquake potential in California-Nevada implied by correlation of strain rate and seismicity
Rock mechanics studies and dynamic earthquake simulations show that patterns of seismicity evolve with time through (1) accumulation phase, (2) localization phase, and (3) rupture phase. We observe a similar pattern of changes in seismicity during the past century across California and Nevada. To quantify these changes, we correlate GPS strain...
Zeng, Yuehua; Petersen, Mark D.; Shen, Zheng-Kang The 2008 Wells, Nevada earthquake sequence: Source constraints using calibrated multiple event relocation and InSAR
The 2008 Wells, NV earthquake represents the largest domestic event in the conterminous U.S. outside of California since the October 1983 Borah Peak earthquake in southern Idaho. We present an improved catalog, magnitude complete to 1.6, of the foreshock-aftershock sequence, supplementing the current U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Preliminary...
Nealy, Jennifer; Benz, Harley M.; Hayes, Gavin P.; Berman, Eric; Barnhart, William D. A paleoseismic transect across the northwestern Basin and Range Province, northwestern Nevada and northeastern California, USA
We use new and existing data to compile a record of ∼18 latest Quaternary large-magnitude surface-rupturing earthquakes on 7 fault zones in the northwestern Basin and Range Province of northwestern Nevada and northeastern California. The most recent earthquake on all faults postdates the ca. 18–15 ka last glacial highstand of pluvial Lake Lahontan...
Personius, Stephen; Briggs, Richard W.; Maharrey, J. Zebulon; Angster, Stephen J.; Mahan, Shannon A. Cyanide poisoning of a Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii)
A Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii) was found dead in a ditch leading from a heap leach pad at a gold mine in Nevada. Observations at autopsy included an absence of external lesions, traces of subcutaneous and coronary fat, no food in the upper gastrointestinal tract, and no lesions in the viscera. Cyanide concentrations (µg/g ww) were 5.04 in...
Franson, J. Christian Chemical abrasion-SIMS (CA-SIMS) U-Pb dating of zircon from the late Eocene Caetano caldera, Nevada
Zircon geochronology is a critical tool for establishing geologic ages and time scales of processes in the Earth's crust. However, for zircons compromised by open system behavior, achieving robust dates can be difficult. Chemical abrasion (CA) is a routine step prior to thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) dating of zircon to remove...
Watts, Kathryn E.; Coble, Matthew A.; Vazquez, Jorge A.; Henry, Christopher D.; Colgan, Joseph P.; John, David A.
Gravity and magnetic studies of the eastern Mojave Desert, California and Nevada
IntroductionFrom May 2011 to August 2014, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collected gravity data at more than 2,300 stations and physical property measurements on more than 640 rock samples from outcrops in the eastern Mojave Desert, California and Nevada. Gravity, magnetic, and physical-property data are used to study and locate regional...
Denton, Kevin M.; Ponce, David A.
Historical files from Federal Government mineral exploration-assistance programs, 1950 to 1974
The Defense Minerals Administration (DMA), Defense Minerals Exploration Administration (DMEA), and Office of Minerals Exploration (OME) mineral exploration programs were active over the period 1950–1974. Under these programs, the Federal Government contributed financial assistance in the exploration for certain strategic and critical minerals. The...
Frank, David G. Terrestrial cosmogenic surface exposure dating of glacial and associated landforms in the Ruby Mountains-East Humboldt Range of central Nevada and along the northeastern flank of the Sierra Nevada
Deposits near Lamoille in the Ruby Mountains-East Humboldt Range of central Nevada and at Woodfords on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada each record two distinct glacial advances. We compare independent assessments of terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) surface exposure ages for glacial deposits that we have determined to those obtained by...
Wesnousky, Steven G.; Briggs, Richard W.; Caffee, Marc W.; Ryerson, Rick J.; Finkel, Robert C.; Owen, Lewis A.
Fish tag recovery from Anaho Island nesting colony, Pyramid Lake, Nevada
In 2001, tags applied to the federally endangered species cui-ui (Chasmistes cujus) to study their population dynamics were discovered strewn throughout the American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) nesting colony on Anaho Island, Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Cui-ui are endemic to Pyramid Lake, and Anaho Island harbors one of North America’s...
Scoppettone, G. Gary; Fabes, Mark C.; Rissler, Peter H.; Withers, Donna
Map of moderate, high and very high threat volcanoes
Map of moderate, high and very high threat volcanoes monitored by the California Volcano Observatory in California and Nevada.
collecting eDNA samples
A USGS Hydrologic Technician collects eDNA samples alongside a stream in the Nevada wilderness
Surveying High-Water Marks and Cross-Sections for Indirects
This video describes how to survey high-water marks and cross-sections for indirect measurements. Included are tips and tricks for getting across non-wadeable sections of the stream.
Selection of Roughness Coefficients
This video describes the field selection of roughness coefficients, or Manning's "n" values. Both the comparative (photos) and analytical (Cowan's) methods are discussed.
Plotting High-Water Marks in the Field Using SAC-GUI
This video describes how to use SAC-GUI in the field to plot high-water mark profiles. Plotting high-water marks in the field is required for most indirect measurement techniques
Theory of the Slope-Area Method
This video covers the theory behind a slope-area indirect measurement, the most common type of indirect measurement used in the USGS.
Surveying Slope-Area Measurements
This video goes into detail about where to flag high-water marks and how to survey a slope-area measurement. A simple one-setup Total Station survey is demonstrated.
Survey Requirements for Critical Depth Indirect Measurements
This video describes the high-water marks needed along with cross-section locations for critical depth indirect measurements. Critical depth computations are those performed when flow goes through a critical flow regime at a drop, such as at a waterfall.
Survey Requirements for Culvert Indirect Measurements - Culvert Survey
This video describes the survey requirements for culvert indirect measurements, specifically how to measure various aspects of the culvert itself. This video provides a general overview of how to survey culvert attributes, such as the invert and length.
Survey Requirements for Non-Standard Culverts
This video discusses how to measure various aspects of non-standard culverts, such as mitered culverts. Using the slope-area method inside a culvert is also discussed.
Surveying Indirect Measurements with GNSS
This video details how to survey indirect measurements with GNSS. Both RTN and RTK setups are discussed, along with tips and tricks and troubleshooting.
Survey Requirements for Culvert Indirect Measurements - Overview
This video describes the survey requirements for culvert indirect measurements, including high-water mark and cross-section locations.
Budget Focuses on Bringing Science, Facilities, and Infrastructure into the 21st Century
For about two months, starting around December 7, 2019, an airplane operated under contract to the USGS will be making low-level flights over parts of the eastern Mojave Desert.
Effects from the two July 2019 Ridgecrest, CA earthquakes were observed in several USGS continuous groundwater-level monitoring sites in California, Nevada, and Arizona.
A new study shows that mysterious cycles in salinity in the lower Colorado River are a result of precipitation patterns in the headwaters of the upper basin more than a thousand river miles away. The salinity levels generally repeat about every 10 years.
The advent of remote sensing was a boon to the ancient science of phenology.
Satellite data offered a global view of nature’s seasonal life cycles that historical tabulators of budding trees and buzzing bees could scarcely imagine.
From the start, however, remotely sensed phenology has come with caveats.
A growing number of wildfire-burned areas throughout the western United States are expected to increase soil erosion rates within watersheds, causing more sediment to be present in downstream rivers and reservoirs, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey.
An examination of long-term data for lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management finds that land treatments in the southwestern United States are increasingly large, expensive and related to fire and invasive species control.
A carbonatite here, a glacial moraine there, a zig-zagging fault or two, even a behemoth of a batholith. The geology of the 50 States is an enormous patchwork of varied forms, beautiful in their variance but challenging to present as a single map.
The U.S. Geological Survey awarded approximately $4.9 million this week to six universities and a university-governed non-profit, to support transitioning the west coast “ShakeAlert” earthquake early warning system into a production system.
Vast mineral wealth has been discovered in the Great Basin since the 1800s. As each new generation of prospectors and geologists brings their cutting-edge tools with them, the arid ridgelines of the desert Southwest have shown more and more potential.
USGS model simulations suggest that Walker Lake will rise by as much as 15 to 18 feet this year, the most in a single year in recorded history.
In 2016, these five states led the pack in mineral production, accounting for about one third of the total mineral production value for the entire country.
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Locations
Nevada Water Science Center
Phone: (775) 887-7600
Fax: (775) 887-7629
Nevada Water Science Center Henderson Office
Phone: (702) 564-4500
Research Drilling Program (USGS California Water Science Center)
Phone: 702-823-1117