Images

Photo of the original Franklin extensometer taken during an inspection in 2015. Recording had ended in 1995, and between 1995 and 2015, groundwater pumping rates lessened causing the aquifer to briefly recover and the land to rebound. This rebound was so significant that it caused the damage to the extensometer seen above.

USGS Scientists inspect the Franklin Extensometer research site in 2015. The extensometer at Franklin had been measuring land subsidence since 1979 but had been offline since 1995 and would be brought back online the following year.

Scientists deployed mobile fish exposure laboratories, such as these two, at sites in the Shenandoah River watershed, Virginia, to understand exposure and effects on fish. Inside the laboratories (see inset photo) fish were placed in aquariums, and exposed to stream water or wastewater during the study.

james River Tidal Survey

Icy Sampling
RML scientist, Adam Mumford, working under ice to obtain grab samples of a stream in North Dakota to assess impacts of a brine spill from unconventional oil and gas activities (UOG). UOG spills often have very high concentrations of salts, metals, naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs), and organic compounds. 

Photograph taken in the middle of Smith Creek in Rockingham County, Virginia. The creek appears shallow and the creek banks are grassy.

An outcrop-scale brittle fault exposed on the shore of Lake Anna in the vicinity of the Dominion North Anna Power Plant.  The fault offsets a pegmatite dike within biotite granitic gneiss by about 1 meter, in a reserve (top-to-east) sense-of-motion.  The small fault is oriented 235°, with a dip of 30° to the northwest (view is to south in this photograph).

USGS Collaborators from Virginia Division of Geology and Mineral Resources and College of William and Mary sample sediment from a high-level terrace deposit about 200 feet above the James River in Cumberland County, Virginia, for age dating using the terrestrial cosmogenic nuclides (TCN) method.  This work was a collaborative effort between the Virginia Departm

A duck blind in New Virginia Cove, part of Chincoteague Island. The salt marshes that make up Chincoteague Island are important habitat for migrating waterfowl.

Water quality monitoring in Fairfax county

Vegetation grows on an east-facing cliff along Bull Run near Sudley Springs in Manassas National Battlefield Park, Virginia. The cliffs are islands of specialized habitat; they support plant species found nowhere else in the park, including locally uncommon or rare species.

East-facing cliff approximately 30 meters downstream from Farm Ford along Bull Run in Manassas National Battlefield Park, Virginia.

USGS streamgage located below the upper reservoir at the pump-storage station on Little Back Creeek, in Bath, Virginia, located in George Washington National Forest.

This view is looking upstream from the USGS gage 02034000 RIVANNA RIVER AT PALMYRA, VA . It is one of the 43 research sites in the Chespeake Synoptic Floodplain Network. 

This is anthracite, the highest rank of coal. It is a hard, brittle, and black lustrous coal, often referred to as hard coal, containing a high percentage of fixed carbon and a low percentage of volatile matter. Anthracite is not as commonly mined as other ranks of coal.

This is anthracite, the highest rank of coal. It is a hard, brittle, and black lustrous coal, often referred to as hard coal, containing a high percentage of fixed carbon and a low percentage of volatile matter. Anthracite is not as commonly mined as other ranks of coal.

This sample is of bituminous coal, a middle rank coal (between subbituminous and anthracite) formed by additional pressure and heat on lignite.

Water in a Mountain Stream in Nelson County Virginia

Early, in the spring it is easy to see some furry insects flying and hovering just above ground.

Field visit for data collection at Paul Spring Branch, Fairfax County, Virginia

View looking east from the Virginia Blue Ridge across the Rock Castle Creek gorge to the rolling hills of the Piedmont.