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Montana is rich in minerals, energy, and soils, as well as prairies, forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, fish, and wildlife. Many enterprises that drive the economy are based on natural resources, including tourism, hunting, fishing, agriculture, and energy development. The outdoor-recreation economy alone supports 64,000 Montana jobs and generates nearly \$6 billion each year in economic activity.
Florida is rich in sunshine and other natural resources essential to the State's economy. More than 100 million tourists visit Florida's beaches, wetlands, forests, oceans, lakes, and streams where they generate billions of dollars and sustain more than a million jobs. Florida also provides habitat for several thousand freshwater and marine fish, mammals, birds, and other wildlife that are viewed, hunted, or fished, or that provide valuable ecological services. Fertile soils and freshwater supplies support agriculture and forest industries and generate more than $8 billion of revenue annually and sustain thousands of jobs.
Nevada is rich in minerals, energy, rangelands, mountains, deserts, lakes, fish, and wildlife. Many enterprises critical to Nevada's economy are based on natural resources including solar energy, livestock production, hunting, fishing, and other outdoor recreation. Nevada is a national leader in both geothermal and solar utility-scale energy production, and invested more than $ 1.2 million in 2016 in solar development alone. Agriculture, primarily livestock production, generates more than half a billion dollars annually, and wildlife watching, hunting, and fishing contribute more than $1 billion to Nevada's economy annually.
Wisconsin and natural resources go hand-in-hand. Tourism, which generates $ 19 billion annually and sustains about 200,000 jobs, depends on an abundance of lakes, rivers, shorelines, and woodlands for fishing, hunting, boating, and other outdoor recreation. Rivers and floodplains in the Upper Mississippi Basin, including the Mississippi River, are part of a five-State corridor that generates more than $ 300 billion annually and sustains millions of manufacturing, tourism, transportation, and agricultural jobs. Wisconsin also is a Great Lakes State with more than 800 miles of shoreline, and the fisheries of lakes Superior and Michigan deliver $ 185 million annually and provide thousands of jobs.
Michigan is rich in lakes, rivers, dune and rocky shorelines, forests, fish and wildlife, and has the longest freshwater coastline in the United States, 3,224 miles. Many enterprises critical to Michigan’s economy and cultural heritage are based on natural resources including commercial and sport fishing, hunting, and other outdoor recreation. Overall, outdoor recreation is enjoyed by more than 63 percent of Michigan residents, and has been estimated to generate $18.7 billion in consumer spending, create 194,000 jobs, and raise $1.4 billion in State and local tax revenue annually.
After nearly a century of producing power, two large hydroelectric dams on the Elwha River in Washington State were removed during 2011 to 2014 to restore the river ecosystem and recover imperiled salmon populations. Roughly two-thirds of the 21 million cubic meters of sediment—enough to fill nearly 2 million dump trucks—contained behind the dams was released downstream, which restored natural processes and initiated important changes to the river, estuarine, and marine ecosystems. A multidisciplinary team of scientists from the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, academia, non-governmental organizations, Federal and state agencies, and the U.S. Geological Survey collected key data before, during, and after dam removal to understand the outcomes of this historic project on the Elwha River ecosystem.
Ohio is home to lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands, forests, prairies, and 312 miles of Lake Erie shoreline. These resources sustain Ohio’s communities by supporting vital sectors of the economy and cultural heritage such as fishing, hunting, and other outdoor recreation. Lake Erie provides drinking water for 3 million Ohioans, supports 124,000 Ohio jobs, and generates \$1.8 billion in tourism revenue to the State. Outdoor recreation is enjoyed by nearly 60 percent of Ohio residents. Annually, it is estimated that outdoor recreation generates \$24.3 billion in consumer spending across the State, creates 215,000 jobs, and raises \$1.5 billion in State and local tax revenue.
Flooding, excessive sedimentation, and high bacteria counts are among the most challenging water resource issues affecting the Upper Roanoke River watershed. These issues threaten public safety, impair the watershed’s living resources, and threaten drinking water supplies, though mitigation is costly and difficult to manage. Urban development, land disturbance, and changing climatic patterns continue to challenge watershed managers who are tasked with protecting and improving the water quality of the Upper Roanoke River watershed. The U.S. Geological Survey helps watershed managers meet these demands by providing high-quality data and analyses designed to inform watershed restoration activities.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is the Federal Government’s independent research agency that conducts research to inform management of invasive species. Bighead, black, grass, and silver carp, which are native to China, were originally stocked in aquaculture facilities to control algae, snails, and vegetation. These species have invaded the Mississippi River and are now established throughout the lower and middle Mississippi River Basins and some of its large tributaries where they damage ecosystems and harm economies. A reproducing population of grass carp in Lake Erie is a risk to the $7 billion Great Lakes fishery. The USGS is leading research efforts on risk assessment and on early detection of new invasions. The USGS is also developing and evaluating harvest methods, barriers and deterrents, and baits/attractants to provide Federal and State management agencies the tools needed to manage and reduce populations of these species.
Introduction The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) serves a principal role in conducting wildlife disease outbreak investigations, surveillance, and ecological research to support management of diseases in free-ranging native wildlife. Approximately 60 percent of emerging human infectious diseases such as COVID-19, are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and humans and 70 percent of these diseases originate in wildlife (Jones and others, 2008). The effects of emerging wildlife diseases are global and profound, often resulting in economic and agricultural impacts, declines in wildlife populations, and ecological disturbances.
Introduction Ecosystems—whether agricultural, urban, or natural—depend on pollinators, great and small. Pollinators in the form of bees, birds, butterflies, bats, and even moths provide vital, but often invisible services, from contributing to biodiverse terrestrial wildlife and plant communities to supporting healthy watersheds. Pollinator declines worldwide have been noted as land-use and climate changes occur on the landscape. This is alarming because up to 75 percent of crop species that are important for human food production depend on pollinators for production. Biodiversity of pollinators in the United States includes more than 4,000 species of insects, birds, and mammals. Pollinator species in the United States are in crisis based on broad-scale changes in land-use and climate. The Committee on the Status of Pollinators in North America summarized active and passive management alternatives to benefit pollinators and reduce their decline. Because assessment of pollinators in the United States has historically lagged behind other regions of the world, the Committee challenged the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to develop conservation plans, for pollinators, including quantification of the effects of climate change. As an example of the immediate need to focus efforts on pollinator conservation, Inouye and others cited the USFWS’s 2017 listing of the rusty-patched bumble bee ( Bombus affinis ) as Endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. Strategies are developed to accomplish pollinator conservation goals and the USGS is contributing scientific expertise toward those goals.
Introduction The cryosphere is the collective parts of the Earth where water is in its frozen state and includes snow, glaciers, ice sheets, ice shelves, freshwater ice, sea ice, and permafrost. The cryosphere is a climate indicator and climate regulator. Surface cryosphere features, such as glaciers, snow, and sea ice, store freshwater and make the surface of the Earth bright white, which affects how much energy from the sun is absorbed or reflected by the planet. The subsurface cryosphere, such as permafrost and ground ice, stores water and other materials, including carbon, nutrients, heavy metals, and viruses. Carbon storage in permafrost is one way the cryosphere regulates the Earth's climate. Changes to the cryosphere indicate the state of the Earth's climate. The cryosphere spans many regions of the Earth, from subtropical regions of the Himalayas to polar regions of the Arctic and Antarctica, and intersects many of the Earth's spheres, including the lithosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere.
Birds are vital to our economy, ecosystems, and cultural heritage. Investing in bird conservation benefits communities, businesses, and working lands while reinforcing our nation’s legacy of stewardship and biodiversity. By valuing birds, we ensure a richer, healthier, and more vibrant future for all Americans. The USGS leads two national bird monitoring programs Thriving bird populations contribute over $ 100 billion in related purchases to the U.S. economy annually, helping to support 1.4 million jobs and $ 90 billion in labor-related income. Across our nation, Federal and State wildlife agencies, Flyway Councils, non-governmental organizations, and more consider data from the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) and Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) to be critical to meeting their mandates to set healthy harvest levels and in identifying species of conservation need. However, without stable and sufficient resources for the BBL and BBS, the capacity to monitor and address the rapidly evolving needs of migratory bird populations is at risk, jeopardizing the foundation of collaborative conservation efforts across North America.
The USGS has collected hydrologic information in Kansas since 1895 with the first USGS Cooperative Water Program funding agreement for 6 streamflow gages with the Kansas Water Board. USGS collects streamflow and gage-height data; reservoir content; water-quality and water-quantity data; suspended-sediment data; and groundwater levels. Hydrologic studies are conducted on national, regional, statewide, and local levels. The USGS in Kansas works cooperatively with 31 Federal, State, and local agencies, such as the Kansas Water Office, the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers, and the City of Wichita.
As of January 2010, 75 years have elapsed since Dr. Frederic Fish initiated the pioneering research program that would evolve into today’s Western Fisheries Research Center (WFRC). Fish began his research working alone in the basement of the recently opened Fisheries Biological Laboratory on Lake Union in Seattle, Washington. WFRC’s research began under the aegis of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and ends its first 75 years as part of the U.S. Geological Survey with a staff of more than 150 biologists and support personnel and a heritage of fundamental research that has made important contributions to our understanding of the biology and ecology of the economically important fish and fish populations of the Nation. Although the current staff may rarely stop to think about it, WFRC’s antecedents extend many years into the past and are intimately involved with the history of fisheries conservation in the Western United States. Thus, WFRC Director Lyman Thorsteinson asked me to write the story of this laboratory “while there are still a few of you around who were here for some of the earlier years” to document the rich history and culture of WFRC by recognizing its many famous scientists and their achievements. This historyalso would help document WFRC’s research ‘footprint’ in the Western United States and its strategic directions. Center Director Thorsteinson concluded that WFRC’s heritage told by an emeritus scientist also would add a texture of legitimacy based on personal knowledge that will all-to-soon be lost to the WFRC and to the USGS. The WFRC story is important for the future as well as for historical reasons. It describes how we got to the place we are today by documenting the origin, original mission, and our evolving role in response to the constantly changing technical information requirements of new environmental legislation and organizational decision-making. The WFRC research program owes its existence to the policy requirements of Federal conservation legislation originating with the construction of Grand Coulee Dam in 1933. The research program was shaped by laws enacted in subsequent years such as the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (1972), National Environmental Policy Act (1973), Endangered Species Act (1974), and Northwest Power Planning Act (1980), to name only a few. The WFRC has not been constrained by direct management or regulatory responsibility for a particular fishery (such as providing sustainable catch limits data to a resource management structure). Thus, WFRC has been able to concentrate on scientific pursuits and information needs required by contemporary environmental legislation. Over the years, we have pioneered in several important areas of fisheries research including the diagnoses and control of diseases in economically important fish, effects of environmental alterations on the physiological quality and survival of Pacific salmon released from federal mitigation hatcheries, applications in biotelemetry, and the bioenergetics of predator-prey interactions in the Columbia River. The WFRC of today is a widely distributed organization in the Western United States. Knowledge of the historical connections and accomplishments of our predecessors is important beyond the sense of pride and unity it instills in the WFRC family of today. For example, a discerning reader will note the evolution of WFRC’s research from a single disciplinary focus (early era—hatchery disease problems), to multiple disciplines (middle to late era—species, populations, habitats; threatened and endangered species), to the present era (multidisciplinary and with increasing process focus). For the benefit of the current WFRC staff, more emphasis has been placed on the early years rather than on the present day because people are quite naturally more familiar with the recent past than with the research done during the first decades of WFRC’s existence. By every rational measure, the WFRC has evolved into a fisheries research organization well positioned to provide the biological information needed to support the continued conservation and management of our Nation’s living aquatic natural resources. The high standard of excellence that connects WFRC’s past to our present research program provides a firm foundation on which to base the work yet to be done. In another 75 years, WFRC will undoubtedly be a very different place than it is today, but its evolution will be forever rooted in the story of the research and of the people related here. More about the diverse fisheries research projects WFRC scientists are conducting today is available at WFRC’s website: http://wfrc.usgs.gov/.
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with State, local, and other Federal agencies, operates a network of streamgages throughout the State of Kansas. Data provided by this network are used to forecast floods, operate reservoirs, develop water policy, administer regulation of water, and perform interpretive analyses of streamflow. This data collection and analysis effort has been sustained since 1895 through cooperative matching fund programs that allow the USGS to work with cooperative agencies to solve groundwater and surface water challenges that affect citizens locally and throughout the Nation.
The U.S. Geological Survey studies the effects of weather, climate, and man-made influences on groundwater levels, streamflow, and reservoir and lake levels, as well as on the ecological health of rivers, lakes, reservoirs, watersheds, estuaries, aquifers, soils, beaches, and wildlife. From these studies, the USGS produces high-quality, timely, and unbiased scientific research and data that are widely accessible and relevant to all levels of government, Tribal Nations, academic institutions, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, and the general public. In New York, the U.S. Geological Survey works with other Federal agencies, State and municipal government, Tribal Nations, and the private sector to develop products that inform decision makers, legislators, and the general public.
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