Images

Left Image: Managed wetland at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Preserve (California Central Valley) showing mixed flocks of foraging birds. Photographer: M. Marvin-DiPasquale.

A driveway in an upscale residential community in the Lake in the Hills, Ill, is coated with coal-tar-based sealcoat.  The driveway has a basketball hoop and a skateboard ramp.

Driveways in an upscale residential subdivision in Lake in the Hills, Ill., are coated with black coal-tar-based sealcoat, contrasting with the white cement sidewalk.

Sealcoat particles abraded from a parking lot with coal-tar-based sealcoat collect by the curbside.  Also shown is a storm drain, half coated with sealcoat, down which the loose particles will be washed by runoff.

Photograph of iron(III) oxyhydroxides (yellow-brown color in two left-hand tubes collected on folded filter paper) that was produced in iron(II)-containing groundwater by the addition of nitrate. The tube on the right is a filter collected from the same groundwater before nitrate was added.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists collecting bed-sediment samples from Suwanee Creek, Gwinnett County, Georgia, on May 23, 2007. 

Soil sampling in Eastern Colorado indicated that some chemicals introduced to nonirrigated farmland through biosolids application persisted through 468 days, and some chemicals were sufficiently mobile to be detected in soil as deep as 126 centimeters below land surface.

Left:  USGS Employee Sherry Wren removing a square meter of surface sediment in pickleweed dominated marsh along the Petaluma River (California), for a study designed to investigate the role of marsh plant root zone on the cycling of mercury. Photographer: L. Windham-Myers. Date: 4/4/2006

A USGS scientist collects a water sample for analysis of mineral particles known as colloids. Toxic metals (such as copper in excess) bind to the particles, which are then ingested by aquatic animals.

USGS scientist collecting water-level data from an observation well during an aquifer test at the Naval Air Warfare Center Fractured Rock Research Site, West Trenton, New Jersey.

Close up of a cyanobacteria bloom on Elysian Lake, Minnesota

Voyageurs National Park (VNP), a pristine setting with abundant lakes, wetlands, and streams situated on granitic bedrock, is located near northern Minnesota's border with Canada. Long-term studies at VNP have revealed trends in mercury concentration in precipitation, surface water, and fish.

Algal and Other Environmental Toxins Laboratory — Lawrence, Kansas. Cyanobacterial accumulation along with a dead fish

Tree swallow nestlings (Tachycineta bicolor) in a nesting box

Typical San Francisco Bay wetland habitat dominated by pickleweed (Salicornia pacifica).

The Silver Ledge Mine in the area of upper Mineral Creek, near Silverton, Colorado, is one of many abandoned mine sites in the watershed. 

Biosolids from a wastewater treatment plant were loaded onto trucks for transport to the field. A team of USGS scientists and their colleagues collected samples of biosolids for analysis from freshly exposed surfaces created by the machinery used to load the biosolids onto trucks.

USGS scientists extracted DNA from aquifer materials and analyzed the DNA for microbial community composition using several methods.

John Clune and Connie Loper, PA Water Science Center, processing an emerging-contaminants bed-sediment sample at Rock Creek near Gettysburg, PA.

John Clune, PA Water Science Center, processing an emerging-contaminants bed-sediment sample at Lititz Run.

John Clune, PA Water Science Center, collecting an emerging-contaminants bed-sediment sample at the Susquehanna River at Danville,PA.