Is Oakland supposed to...ripple like that? [more inside]
posted by rtha on Nov 12, 2008 - 63 comments

U. S. Geological Survey Photographic Library [more inside]
posted by sleepy pete on Oct 9, 2008 - 8 comments

Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project ― the grizzly bear has had a threatened status for more than 30 years now. Several zones have been established in the northwestern U.S. and Canada to monitor recovery. Kate Kendall of the USGS led a project to investigate recovery through DNA monitoring of the bears. Since the funds dried up, Kate and her team have used remote cameras to capture some interesting footage of bears and other wildlife.
posted by netbros on Jun 30, 2008 - 9 comments

Native Names Projects by the Coeur d'Alene Tribe GIS Program and the Hawaii Board on Geographic Names are adding audio pronunciation guides to geospatial place-name datasets in several on-line mapping formats. [more inside]
posted by mmahaffie on Apr 3, 2008 - 5 comments

A good resouce for bird idenification / watching: USGS's Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter includes calls, photos and population coverage maps and seasonal birding checklists. And on a completely unrelated note, they have a sweet guide on the morphology of tadpoles. -mi-
posted by bigmusic on Jul 3, 2006 - 4 comments

Mysterious Boom felt throughout Southern California this morning with no explanation. USGS claims there were no quakes, meteorologists claim nothing in the weather could have caused it, military bases are claiming that nothing they were doing would cause such a rumble, and air traffic controllers state that no supersonic flights were taking place in the area (no sonic boom). I was awoken by the shaking and the car alarms that followed. If it's none of the above, just what caused it?
posted by afx114 on Apr 4, 2006 - 119 comments

U.S. Geological Survey before and after photos of gulf coast barrier islands in Alabama and Florida showing the impact of Hurricane Ivan.
posted by pitchblende on Sep 21, 2004 - 20 comments

GEODE (Geo-Data Explorer) is a free service offered by the U.S. Geological Survey.
It allows the user to retrieve, display, and manipulate multiple types of information, such as satellite images, geologic maps, graphics, live camera feed, three-dimensional images, and spreadsheet data.
posted by thatwhichfalls on Jan 28, 2004 - 1 comment

Minor Washington state quake. It's been a while since I've experienced and earthquake, so when tonight's little one hit my hometown (a mere 3.2) I was a little shocked (and a little excited). I was also really impressed with the seemingly instantaneous response by the USGS and the University of Washington's GeoPhysics Dept. on their websites classifying it.

In the olden-days (eg- pre-Internet) I'd have to wait for the early morning news to find out any information about it, but through the miracle of HTTP I have all the info I want mere seconds after the event. In fact, less than 15 minutes after the quake the USGS site had over 260 responses on their website about the quake from people who felt it and left comments on their site.

I wonder if there are other sites that help classify and/or disseminate information about other naturally occurring phenomenon (hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.)... anyone, anyone?
posted by crankydoodle on Jan 16, 2004 - 9 comments

6.5 Quake Hits Central California. Felt for over a minute in San Jose, about 50 miles south of San Francisco. Interesting time to discover the oft-defunded USGS's instant earthquake news page. Talk about dynamically generating your pages your pages from the ground up...
posted by effugas on Dec 22, 2003 - 68 comments

Been to a USGS site today? What about your favorite national park site? Probably not, since all are part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, whose external network connections have been severed due to electronic security concerns raised by the court in the case Cobell v. Norton (formerly Cobell v. Babbitt).

With no external email or access to the Internet could you do your job? How dependent is your workplace on electronic information access? (Since all their websites are down, I have no direct link to post. A copy of the memo was sent to the members by the admin of a USGS email distribution list.)
posted by carobe on Dec 7, 2001 - 16 comments