Images

View of the church's front entrance, showing the collapsed wall under the eave, framing, and wall above the doors. The pile of building debris shows why taking cover (Drop! Cover! Hold on!) inside a building is safer than trying to run outside or stand in a doorway when the ground shakes.

This is sagebrush burning at Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in association with a management project located 65 miles northeast of Lakeview, OR.

Seismic station at Yellow Rock (YEL) with the toe of the west arm of Crater Glacier in the background. This station site was eventually covered by the glacier.

Lava pours over the former sea cliff at East Lae‘apuki onto an active lava delta (left of cliff). The lava broke out from a lava tube just inland of the sea cliff (right of photograph).

Seismic station at Three Sisters volcano in Central Oregon. Seismometer in box on the ground with data transmission antenna mounted on pole.

Columnar joints in horizontal orientation along the Ricksecker lava flow margin. Columns formed as lava cooled against valley filling glaciers leaving flows perched high on Mount Rainier's ridges.

Two prominent, historic lava flows are visible in this aerial photo of West Hawai‘i. Kīholo Bay is flanked by the 1859 Mauna Loa flow (left) and a Hualālai flow that  erupted around 1800 or earlier (right). These lava flows and other volcanic landscapes along Highways 11 and 190 will be the focus of a Volcano Awareness Month talk in Kona on Jan. 22

Photograph of Pingok Island, Alaska, reveals physical features of a changing Arctic: collapsing bluffs, salt-killed tundra (lighter brown near the bluff edge), and drained thermokarst lakes (rust-colored depressions).

An oblique aerial photograph shows the currently active Long Range Radar Site on Barter Island, formerly a DEW Line (Distant Early Warning) station that was deactivated in 1990. The Cold War-era landfill in the foreground of the photograph was at immediate risk from coastal erosion in 2006 and has since been relocated farther inland.

This photograph shows ice-wedge polygons and an eroding shoreline at Cape Halkett on the Beaufort Sea coast of Alaska. Coastal erosion along the Arctic coast is chronic, widespread, and potentially accelerating, posing threats to infrastructure important for defense and energy purposes, natural shoreline habitats, and nearby Native communities.

Photograph of barrier islands near the western terminus of Icy Reef located on the Beaufort Sea coast of Alaska, looking south. Egaksrak Lagoon separates the islands from the low-lying mainland coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Brooks Range in the background.

Young mountain big sagebrush shown in the foreground are re-establishing in a native bunchgrass community 15 years after a fire along the Boise Front Mountains looking unto the Snake River Plain, Idaho.

Panoramic photograph from the southern rim of Mount St. Helens' crater rim looking north with accompanying annotation.

View the annotated version of this photograph.

View the annotated image.

View northward from Mount St. Helens' crater rim, July 2006.

San Francisco Volcanic Field Oct 12, 2003 ASTER satellite image draped over USGS topographic data. San Francisco Mountain upper center-right, volcanic field cinder cones and lava flows in foreground.

Substantial cracks cutting across a lava delta are clear indication that the delta is subsiding as it grows across the unstable pile of interfingering lava flows and fragments built on the steep submarine slope. The larger cracks on this delta are 1-2 m (3-6 ft) wide.

Lava delta at East Lae‘apuki on the southeast coast of Kīlauea Volcano is about 17 hectares (43 acres). The delta extends about 400 m seaward from the sea cliff and is about 850 m long parallel to the shoreline. The steep sea cliff embayment resulted from collapses of earlier deltas; the collapses undermined and took away parts of the cliff.

Helicopter flying toward lava spine at Mount St. Helens to collect rocks—note the "Jaws" collector hanging underneath. April 28, 2007

USGS personnel measuring flood overflow near Whitey's Restaurant in East Grand Forks.