Images

Brown patches and brown stems show stress in this phagmites (roseau cane) stand in Pass A Loutre Wildlife Management Area, a tract of state-owned land in Louisiana's bird foot delta, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. An ongoing phragmites was first discovered in spring 2017 and blamed on an invasive scale insect from Asia.

Researchers examine a bat (Myotis sp.) to test for the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome.

The Wildcat experimental treatment site in southwest Idaho at the base of the Owyhee Mountains. The brown square was treated with pre-emergent herbicide and is free of cheatgrass, a few native perennial bunchgrasses were able to establish. This image was taken the first Spring after treatment.

Mule deer investigating a game camera in Madison Valley, Montana.

Researcher swabs the body of a honeybee with fuschin gel to later use to identify the pollen particles on the bee's body and determine what plants the bee visited.

Mark Ford and his graduate students at the Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (Ecosystems Mission Area, USGS), on the Virginia Tech campus, lead research on white-nose syndrome in bats across the mid-Atlantic states and northeast U.S. The research focuses on habitat use, distribution, and population ecology.

Vegetation assessments are part of an effort to produce seamless, consistent, and high resolution landcover data for the northern portion of the western gulf coastal plain. This geography was once dominated by tallgrass prairie and has undergone dramatic change with less than 1% of this natural habitat in existence.

Biological science aid, Marlee Malmborg, examines and records the viability of pallid sturgeon eggs at the Columbia Environmental Research Center.

The Riverside East Solar Energy Zone is a vast area in southern California designated for large-scale solar development. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is charged with monitoring wildlife in this area to minimize the effects of the solar production on wildlife species.

The sailfin catfish is one of 13 species of nonnative fish that biologists discovered during the Fish Slam in Big Cypress National Preserve, March 23, 2017.

The pike killifish, native to Mexico and Central America, was one of 13 nonnative fish species that biologists discovered during the two-day Fish Slam in Big Cypress National Preserve, March 22 and 23, 2017.

USGS Western Ecological Research Center scientist Lesley DeFalco pollinates sun cup flowers for the Desert Restoration Program. In the experiment pictured here, USGS scientists pollinated individual sun cup flowers using a small paintbrush to help increase seed stocks to use in experiments throughout the Mojave Desert.

Width measurement for Pacific pocket mouse forefoot print on track card

USGS scientist Nick Johnson isn’t afraid to get dirty. Here he is expressing green feces from a parasitic sea lamprey. DNA in the feces may help USGS scientists discover the identity of sea lamprey’s last meal. 

A long-tailed duck with an underwater speaker in the background. This is part of a study by the USGS and partners to identify the frequencies at which sea ducks can hear underwater. The research can help inform decisions on the use of sound devices to deter ducks from fishing gillnets and other threats. Credit: Jonathan Fiely, USGS. Date: March 2017.

Honey bees play a major role in pollinating the world’s plants, including those we eat regularly. However, land-use changes that decrease flower abundance can affect bee health and pollination services.

Cover photo for Shinneman, D.J., Welty, J.L., Arkle, R.S., Pilliod, D.S., Glenn, N.F., McIlroy, S.K., Halford, A.S., 2018, Fuels guide and database for intact and invaded big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) ecological sites—User manual: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series Report 1048, p.

Raccoon with a transmitter sits by the edge of the water in Suisun Marsh.

The desmid family of single-celled green algae are never found in abundance, says USGS biologist Barry Rosen. They inhabit the soft, slightly acidic water of wetlands that depend on rainwater, like Florida’s Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. They don’t “bloom” en masse, but their presence is an indicator of good water quality.

This remote area along the southern Idaho-Oregon border was affected by the 2015 Soda Fire, which burned nearly 400 square miles of sagebrush habitat important to many species of wildlife, as well as federal and private ranchlands.

USGS conducts a health assessment on a mantee in Crystal River, Florida.