Thermal

The Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve (JELA) in southeastern Louisiana is being invaded by feral hogs (Sus scrofa) and needs a systemic survey to determine the distribution and number of hogs that exist within the park boundary.

The estimation and mapping of evapotranspiration (ET) is an active area of applied USGS research in the fields of agriculture and water resources. Specifically, combining remote sensing data along with climate and other weather information in a cloud-based compute framework has illustrated the value of next-generation ET mapping for nationwide water use information.

Landsat satellites have been operating since 1972, providing a continuous global record of the Earth’s land surface. The imagery is currently available at no cost through the USGS. A previous USGS study estimated that Landsat imagery provided users an annual benefit of $2.19 billion in 2011, with U.S. users accounting for $1.79 billion of those benefits.

Lithium is a critical element for making the high-efficiency batteries used in electric cars, cell phones, computers, and solar grid electric storage. The largest lithium production in the world comes from lithium-rich brines in playas (dry lake beds), such as the Salar de Atacama located in Chile, South America.

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.

The Delaware River Basin was chosen as a test bed for integrating USGS water and land use research to advance understanding on the interactions and feedbacks among climate, water availability, and land cover. Fundamental interactions can be observed from historical data and simulated using scenarios for changes in land use using projections in precipitation and temperature patterns.

Although the International Union on Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the Egyptian tortoise (Testudo Kleinmanni) as critically endangered, it is the least studied tortoise species in the Mediterranean basin.

The Central Valley of California is one of the most productive agricultural regions of the United States and irrigated agriculture is one of the heaviest consumers of water resources, so understanding how different crops use water over time is essential for planning and managing water allocation, water rights, and agricultural production.

The rich archive of Landsat imagery combined with the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model can be used to estimate and map actual evapotranspiration (ET) across large basins to quantify long-term crop consumptive use.

Carbonate precipitation can occur where groundwater enters lakes and supplies chemicals missing from the lake, creating carbonate mounds called tufa mounds or microbialites. These precipitates can often be associated with microbes that either create micro-environments that encourage precipitation or act as templates for precipitation.