Images

Northwestern pond turtles are sexually dimorphic (females and males look different). One way to tell female and male turtles apart is that they often have different color patterns on their face and throats. Females have a more speckled throat, while males throats tend to be more solidly white/yellow.

These turtles are considered juveniles until they reach about 5 inches long. In this part of their range turtles remain juveniles and usually do not begin to reproduce until they are over ten years old.  

Photo taken at Lookout Point Reservoir, Oregon. 

This is a juvenile turtle. When they aren't in scared or in danger, northwestern turtles are very curious and will look towards movements and unusual sounds to figure out what is going on. They have excellent vision and hearing.  

Photo taken at Hills Creek Reservoir, Oregon. 

We glue transmitters onto their upper shells (called their carapace) using non-permanent epoxy. We will track these turtles until the transmitter battery dies (about 2 years) and soon after that the epoxy degrades, and the transmitter will fall off the turtle without harming the turtle or it's shell. 

Turtle found in the spring coming out of brumation. It is still covered in mud from being buried in the ground all winter.  They can brumate up to several months! 

Photo taken at Lookout Point Reservoir, Oregon. 

Northwestern pond turtles often return to the same area each winter for brumation. We tracked this turtle overwintering in almost the exact same area in the winters of 2023 and 2024. It's brumation location was only 11m apart between the two years.  

Photo taken at Fall Creek Reservoir, Oregon. 

Ramona Rapp is preparing the surgery station where adult Lost River suckers are surgically implanted with acoustic telemetry transmitters. This study is being conducted to understand seasonal survival and habitat use of Lost River suckers in Upper Klamath Lake.

This turtle crossed a road leaving the reservoir and will cross it again to return to the reservoir. Road crossings present high risk to turtles and are a large source of mortality.  

Photo taken at Lookout Point Reservoir, Oregon

Sarah Flores collecting snails from the marshes of Upper Klamath Lake. At the Western Fisheries Research Center, scientists are conducting research on parasites in Upper Klamath Lake, Klamath Falls, OR.

This is a photo of fish pathogenic cercariae collected from intermediate snail hosts. The Western Fisheries Research Center (WFRC) is working to determine the extent of the effects of these parasitic organisms on suckers in Klamath Falls, OR. Top: Diplostomum gavium; Bottom: Bolbophorus sp.

Sarah Flores presenting her lab's work at the 2025 International Symposium on Fish Parasites in Mérida Yucatán, Mexico. Sarah Flores works with the Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle, WA to help suckers in the Upper Klamath Lake in Klamath Falls, OR.

This is a landscape photo of the Klamath River with mountains on either side of the photo. The Western Fisheries Research Center is researching the effects of flow management before and after dam removal on juvenile Chinook salmon survival to the ocean. 

Collin Smith and Georgia Martin are inserting passive integrated transponders in juvenile Chinook Salmon at Fall Creek Hatchery, California to track their movements. Data are collected for each fish, including length, weight, and the individual number of the inserted tag.

This photo shows the California Department of Fish and Wilflife’s screw trap on the lower Shasta River, where Western Fisheries Research Center (WFRC) scientists surgically implant acoustic telemetry tags and passive integrated transponder tags into juvenil Chinook salmon collected at this site.

In this photo a USGS Biological Science Technician Brittany Graham is surgically implanting an acoustic telemetry tag into a juvenile salmon on the banks of the lower Shasta River. The Western Fisheries Research Center (WFRC) uses fish with acoustic transmitters to track fish movements and estimate survival. This information provides water managers with ro

Map of the Northwestern United States showing major volcanic features associated with the mantle plume currently underneath Yellowstone caldera.  Colors indicate general basaltic (blues) versus rhyolitic (reds) compositions, with shades indicating age (darker shades are older).  Rough outlines of calderas that formed due to the Yellowstone hotspot are give

This map shows 2024 shrub cover from the Rangeland Condition Monitoring Assessment and Projection (RCMAP) project across the McDermitt Caldera, outlined in gray, along the Nevada–Oregon border. Dark green areas indicate high shrub cover, typically found in riparian zones and at higher elevations.

Temperature logger attached to submerged cobble in Quartzville Creek, OR. This logger was placed as part of an ongoing effort to retrieve continuous temperature data from rivers and tributaries within the Willamette River basin, OR.

A young rough-skinned newt in a defensive posture known as "unkenreflex." Several amphibian species curl up their bodies to display their brightly colored bellies as a warning to predators that they are poisonous.

This map, taken from a 2024 journal article by Furlong et al. 2024, shows the location and magnitude of seismic events (earthquakes) and rock type on a basemap of a portion of the west coast of North America.

Map of Newberry volcano shows location where earthquakes occurred during geothermal work in 2012 and 2014 (orange circles) and volcanic earthquakes that have occurred since 2011 (blue circles).