Images

Pale gills of a herring with VEN (top) compared to those of an uninfected, healthy herring (bottom).

A turbid Lost Dog Creek tumbles down steep slopes before feeding Lake Oswego.

Tanner Creek outfall delivers stormwater runoff with insecticides to Tanner Creek, tributary of the Willamette River

When looking for a place to set up a capture location, biologists look for existing bear sign such as scratches on trees and bear scat.  Sometimes traps are set in areas that have no obvious bear sign to determine if indeed bears are present.

This summer, crews made significant modifications to a monitoring station on the southwest flank of Mount St. Helens, greatly improving its operability in winter.

Crews survey Loowit Creek channel and other points inside the crater. Elevation information is used to make a longitudinal profile of the channel, characterizing areas where sediment is either deposited or transported and how the channel is changing with time. View to the north, with Spirit Lake and Mount Rainier in the background.

A survey base station is established using a RTK-GPS receiver with mobile units to collect data points in and around the crater. Information will be used to monitor surface changes, deformation, erosion and aggradation inside the crater. This type of technology is precise to the centimeter. View is to the south of Mount St.

Monitoring and upgrading ground-based sensor networks at the most active volcano in the Cascades is an on-going process. Crews made significant modifications to a seismic monitoring station on the southwest flank of Mount St. Helens, greatly improving its operability in winter.

Monitoring stations need to be portable. Weighing about 500 pounds, this "swing set" structure can be airlifted into place or moved, as volcano monitoring needs change. An additional 1,000 pounds of equipment will need to be added to make the station fully functional.

Crews access remote monitoring sites by helicopter. Pictured out the window of the helicopter is a GPS and camera station, dedicated to remotely monitoring changes inside the crater and under the crater floor.

A survey base station is established using a RTK-GPS receiver with mobile units to collect data points in and around the crater. Information will be used to monitor surface changes, deformation, erosion and aggradation inside the crater. This type of technology is precise to the centimeter. View to the south, toward Crater Glacier and the lava domes.

Crater Glacier, located inside the crater of Mount St. Helens, continues to move at an average rate of about 11 cm per day (4.3 inches). During warm weather months, meltwater creates erosional channels on the crater floor.

Steaming continues on the 1980-1986 dome. View to the south and the east arm of Crater Glacier.

A fumerole near the 1980-86 dome keeps an open hole in the east arm of Crater Glacier. The hole is approximately 12 m (40 ft) in diameter, easily wide enough to hold a school bus and deep enough so you could not see the bus' top. View to the south.

Fieldwork includes direct observations of changes to streams and stream beds to determine how changes will affect the downstream transportation of sediments. Here, the braided North Fork Toutle (left) joins Carbonate Springs Creek (right). View to the east.

Juvenile Steelhead to be tagged with a Passive Integrated Transponder tag for life-history research in the Wind River, WA.

Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes (CSAV) students Javier Pacheco (Costa Rica) and Syegi Kunrat (Indonesia) participate in field studies at Mount St. Helens.

USGS Hydrologic Technician Keith Hein carries water-quality samples past USGS streamgage 13311250 on the East Fork of the South Fork Salmon River. The samples were collected as part of a USGS water-quality study conducted in the historical Stibnite Mining District of central Idaho.

Teachers take a guided walk on the Hummocks Trail, learning about the depositional features of the May 18, 1980 eruption.

Todd Cullings, with the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, leads teachers in activities they can do with students before hiking the Hummocks Trail.

The scientists are running PVC pipes that will irrigate plants in a common garden.