Images

Enlarged details of Survey Area 1 showing new multibeam bathymetry data (rainbow colors) acquired on R/V Solstice near Cross Sound and Glacier Bay National Park, southeastern Alaska. Arrows highlight the surface expression, or trace, of the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather fault.

Enlarged from previous figure, this map shows a string of basins along the fault and offset of the south wall of the Yakobi Sea Valley. Line A–B marks the location of multichannel seismic-reflection profile.

Profile of newly discovered volcano-like cone in sonar record collected off southern Alaska. The cone’s summit is at about 1,000 meters water depth. Note fluid plume (blue) rising more than 700 meters upward from the summit.

Seafloor trace of the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather fault (from top left to bottom right) offsets the edge of the Yakobi Sea Valley off southeast Alaska. This 700-mile-long fault has generated large earthquakes in the past. Future shocks—and tsunamis—could threaten coastal communities in the U.S. and Canada. (Color-coded depths, in meters, were mapped in 2015.)

Enlarged map of the Yakobi Sea Valley. Closeup view (upper right) shows right-lateral offset of the Yakobi Sea Valley wall by the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather fault. MCS, multichannel seismic; km, kilometers. For location, see the southeastern Alaska trackline map.

Emperor geese at the shoreline in Kodiak.

Scanning Electron Microscope image of resuspended volcanic ash from the 1912 Novarupta-Katmai deposits in the Katmai region, picked up during high winds on November 1, 2015 and carried to Larsen Bay on Kodiak Island, AK. Sample collected by Sherry Harmes of Larsen Bay.

A Red-breasted Nuthatch captured at an Anchorage banding station

Female and cub polar bear on land near Kaktovik, Alaska

USGS\AVO seismologist works to replace an old seismometer at seismic station LSSA on Little Sitkin Volcano in the western Aleutian Arc.

AVO seismologists work to repair a seismic station on Little Sitkin Volcano in the western Aleutians Islands.

Earth MRI - Yukon Tanana Uplands Alaska

Helicopter landing to pick up field personnel after a day of geologic mapping and sampling in the Fortymile region north of Tok, Alaska.

A high alpine tributary of the Agashashok River.

Allen Bondurant measuring the depth to permafrost along a thermokarst lake shore.

A mother caribou and her offspring, east of Chicken, Alaska (on the Yukon-Alaska border).

USGS scientist examining outcrops of strongly deformed and metamorphosed rock along Divide Mountain in the Yukon-Tanana upland of eastern Alaska

Half-meter-thick quartz veins cut across outcrops of granitic gneiss on Divide Mountain along the Alaska-Yukon border, August 2015

Sediment core showing sandy tsunami deposits over soil from an upland environment on Sitkalidak Island, Alaska.

Rob Wilson pipetting PCR products into an acrylamide gel; after electrophoresis he'll be able to visualize fragment size differences within and among individuals.