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U.S. Department of the Interior
Fountain Creek, a tributary to the Arkansas River, is located along the Colorado Front Range. Over the last 100 years, considerable changes in land use and water use have occurred within the Fountain Creek watershed. To meet the needs of the growing population, water is imported from outside the watershed by means of trans-mountain diversions, and most recently, the Southern Delivery System (SDS).
Burn severity mapping is commonly informed by changes in vegetation spectral response; the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity program, for instance, relies on pre- and post-fire Landsat image pairs to delineate and characterize fire severity.
The USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory utilizes a multi-rotor unmanned aircraft system (UAS) outfitted with a miniature USGS-developed MultiGAS sensor to measure quiescent gas emissions above the 2004–2008 lava dome within the crater of Mount St. Helens. These new technologies allowed the team to characterize degassing at Mount St.
From May to September 2018, Kīlauea volcano experienced its largest eruption in more than 200 years. The eruption drained the summit lava lake and shallow magma reservoir, covering the volcano’s lower East Rift Zone in 35 square-kilometer of lava. Successive collapse events at the summit resulted in a collapsed crater more than 500-meter deep.
Barrier islands are dynamic environments. Under calm conditions, they are gradually shaped by currents, waves, and tides; during hurricanes and other extreme storms, they can evolve within hours to days. Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) can collect monitoring data, especially elevation information, via Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques, with a temporal resolution that is well-suited for these dynamic environments.
The USGS National Unmanned Systems Project Office (NUPO), in collaboration with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, constructed a photogrammetric three-dimentional digital surface model (DSM) and orthometric image map via an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) using Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques.
Monastery Run Wetland 1 near Latrobe, Pennsylvania, is a passive mine water treatment system constructed in 1997–1998 to treat multiple discharges from an abandoned underground mine. The OSMRE Technical Support Division assisted the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) with diagnosing issues and improving the effectiveness of the water treatment system.
The Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite near Shell, Wyoming, showcases an exposed dry wash with hundreds of Jurassic, carnivorous dinosaur tracks preserved in the rock. The tracks, formed approximately 167 million years ago, were discovered by members of the public in 1997. The BLM has created a 40-acre recreation site around this quarter-acre tracksite and is tasked with preserving the tracks and their value for the public.
The BLM’s National Operations Center (NOC) frequently assists field offices with production verification at mine sites across the West, but these analyses are often limited by a lack of historical data.
Migratory species depend on a chain of habitats for survival, including breeding habitats, overwintering sites, and migratory stopover locations. Barrier islands in the northern Gulf of Mexico provide habitat for all three of these life-history phases and are important habitat for many shorebird species, such as Red Knots, Piping Plovers, and Western Sandpipers.
