Videos

This is B-roll video of POV Polar Bear Collar Cam B-roll 2019, 2021, and 2022. 

The bushfire season in northern Australia generally runs from May to October. 2023 was an especially intense year in the north. Select infrared imagery from the Landsat archive was used here to produce a rolling mosaic timelapse of the landscape in eight-day segments.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is set to become the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa.

Located near the Sudan border in Ethiopia, the promising and controversial project impacts communities up and down the Blue Nile.

Landsat sensors capture the region in false color infrared, emphasizing the reservoir's boundary.

An Instagram Live even hosted by Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland with special guest USGS Director Dr. David Applegate. The even took place on January 5, 2024.

In this monthly update of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, we present our take on the top five headlines for 2023.

0:12 - Earthquakes, Deformation

1:20 - Steamboat Geyser Eruptions

2:30 - New Monitoring for Hydrothermal

3:24 - Volcanic Eruptions at Yellowstone

4:34 - Magma Chamber below Yellowstone

The home of the Landsat satellite archive is surrounded by corn and soybean fields. The archive is kept at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS) located near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. EROS is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

The Amazon Rainforest in South America typically experiences its drier season between the months of July and October. Satellite imagery from Landsats 9 and 8 show severe drought conditions in 2023 in comparison to 2022 when the area received average rainfall.

Steamboat Geyser is the tallest geyser in the world. It has been putting on a show the last few years for visitors at Yellowstone National Park with a record number of water eruptions, 48 eruptions each in 2019 and 2020. But it's only had eight eruptions in 2023. Is Steamboat losing steam? 

Six Eruptions at Two Volcanoes Over the Past Three Years

How the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory monitors some of Earth’s most active volcanoes

by Katie Mulliken, Geologist, Research Corporation of the University of Hawai‘i and USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory

Mauna Loa 2022 eruption anniversary video. Mauna Loa is Earth's largest active volcano and covers just over half of the Island of Hawaiʻi. It erupted most recently in November-December 2022, and it will erupt again.

Lava flows are one of the coolest (or maybe hottest!) features about volcanoes, but what would a lava flow look like if you could peel away the surface and take a peek underneath?

Computer simulation of two planets undergoing a disruptive giant impact. Disruptive collisions are not expected to be common in Solar System formation and due to numerical effects, the amount of disruption shown here is likely overestimated. The larger (target) body is one tenth the mass of the Earth and the smaller (impactor) body is 70% the mass of the target.

Computer simulation of two planets undergoing a giant impact that results in a merger (accretion). The larger (target) body is one tenth the mass of the Earth and the smaller (impactor) body is 70% the mass of the target. The planets are colliding at 1.08 times their mutual escape velocity, which equates to 3.63 km/s.

Computer simulation of two planets undergoing a hit-and-run giant impact. This style of collision comprises around half of the giant impacts expected to occur during the latter stages of Solar System formation. The larger (target) body is one tenth the mass of the Earth and the smaller (impactor) body is 70% the mass of the target.

Yellowstone is a geologic wonderland with over 2 billion years of Earth's history recorded in the rocks. But some of that history is missing. Where did it go? We’ll look into that mystery in the October 2023 update from the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

No Place for Flamingos on Fuente de Piedra.

Fuente de Piedra, a saltwater lagoon in southern Spain, is an important breeding site for thousands of flamingos. In 2023, the shallow wetland nearly completely dried up, leaving little space for the birds. Only a few dozen birds were seen on the lagoon this year, a situation that could impact tourism.

Eruptive activity was shutting down at Kīlauea summit on Saturday, September 16, with only weak spattering at one vent in the morning. By midday, the eruptive activity had effectively ended.

This is a video compilation of Kīlauea volcano's summit eruption in September 2023. The video shows clips of the eruptive vents and lava fountains as the eruption progressed from September 10-16, 2023. 

This video was taken during an eruption-monitoring overflight on September 15, 2023. The eruption at the summit of Kīlauea continues, though with reduced vigor and a shrinking area of active lava. Over the past day one of the major vents shut down, leaving just two main vents active.

Several vents continued to erupt on the western side of the downdropped block within Kīlauea's summit caldera on September 6, 2023.  The roughly east-west trending active vents span approximately 0.5 miles (750 m) and had lava fountain heights of up to about 10 meters (32 feet).

During an HVO eruption monitoring overflight on September 12, 2023, HVO geologists landed on the downdropped block within Kīlauea's summit caldera and searched for a safe place to collect a lava sample.