Audio

An updated USGS assessment on the economic recoverability of undiscovered, conventional oil and gas resources within the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) and adjacent state waters is available. Economically recoverable resources are those that can be sold at a price that covers the total costs from finding the resource to getting it the market.

2011 had been predicted to be a particularly bad year for flooding in the northern Plains and upper Midwest. Areas along the Red River in North Dakota and Minnesota and the James Rivers in the Dakotas are still experiencing flooding from snowmelt. Now extreme rainfall is causing severe flooding along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

USGS South Carolina Water Science Center Data Chief, John Shelton in a special hydrologic expedition down the Congo River, West Africa. Part three of the three part episode, reveals a hydrologic data set that changed the world record books.

Earthquakes – and large ones at that – threaten to shake residents and buildings of the central and eastern United States, a reality that scientists, emergency responders and others hope to drive home during the bicentennial of the 1811 and 1812 New Madrid earthquakes.

Since its creation in 1882, the USGS Library has grown to become the world's largest library dedicated to earth and natural sciences, holding more than 1.5 million volumes and 800,000 maps. Richard Huffine, Director of the USGS Libraries Program, will highlight some of the rarest, most valuable, and significant materials held by the USGS.

Randall Orndorff, Director of the Eastern Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center, discusses how Karst affects daily life. Beneath a quarter of the United States are rock types that can dissolve to form caves, sinkholes and other features. Nearly every state has rock layers of limestone, gypsum, and other soluble rocks we call ‘karst’.

Insect-eating bats provide pest-control services that save the U.S. agriculture industry over $3 billion per year, according to a study released today in the journal Science. However, scientists with the U.S.

Earthquakes affect Earth’s intricate plumbing system. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Japan on March 11, 2011 affected water levels in groundwater wells in many places in the United States. In this episode of CoreCast USGS Geophysicist Evelyn Roeloffs explains this phenomenon.

The upper Midwest, the Deep South, the Northern Plains, the Ohio Valley and parts of southern New England are experiencing flooding now or are highly vulnerable to flooding this spring.

A magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011. USGS geophysicists and Bill Ellsworth and Eric Geist talk to CoreCast host Kara Capelli about the quake and subsequent tsunami.

In this episode we sit down with USGS wildlife biologist Joan Hagar and discuss her recent study on songbirds in the Pacific Northwest. New research indicates a possible relationship between reductions in the abundance of some species of songbird and reductions in the amount of deciduous trees in evergreen forests.

Groundwater is not a single vast pool of underground water; rather, it is contained within a variety of aquifer systems. Each of these aquifers has its own set of questions and challenges.

Walruses are important to human communities bordering the Chukchi and Bering seas in the United States and Russia, and the status of walrus provides information about the health of these highly productive marine ecosystems.

Dr. Matthiew Perry, Senior Advisor at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, highlights 75 years of wildlife conservation research at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in celebration of the Center’s 75th anniversary. Major programs include global climate change studies, Chesapeake Bay studies, and wildlife conservation monitoring.

A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the south island of New Zealand near Christchurch on February 21, resulting in 75 lives being lost. This earthquake was an aftershock from the Sept. 4^th magnitude 7.0 earthquake that occurred in nearby Darfield last year. So why did this lesser magnitude earthquake result in more damage and lives lost? 

Sounds of lava lake activity within Kilauea Volcano's summit vent inside Halema`uma`u Crater on the afternoon of February 14, 2011. The continuous "crashing wave" noise is the sound of churning lava as gases are released from the lake surface, which is in nearly constant motion.

Though the Great Lakes are the largest freshwater system on Earth, the basin has the potential for local shortages, according to a new basin-wide water availability assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Beginning on Christmas Eve, 1861, and continuing into early 1862, an extreme series of storms lasting 45 days struck California. The storms caused severe flooding, turning the Sacramento Valley into an inland sea.

With the New Year came a number of mass animal deaths across the country, including the 3-5,000 red-winged blackbirds that fell near Beebe, AR, beginning on New Year’s Eve. The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.

For this month’s episode we discuss the water-quality parameter turbidity. More than just a way to measure dirty water, turbidity can serve as a useful indicator of the ecological health of a watershed.

In this month’s episode we discuss how 3-D modeling is used to examine groundwater in the Columbia Plateau. USGS hydrologist Erick Burns describes how his team modeled the 53,000 mi² plateau, how this information is currently used, and what implications it has for the future.