#usgs

#usgs

The average elevation across the United States varies significantly, creating a divide between the high-altitude West and the lower-lying East and South, which impacts skiing conditions.

'Due to its extent and location it is clear that this is in fact the same magma reservoir as in the previous eruption,' geophysicist Professor Seama Nobukazu said.

In North Oaks, Minnesota, property lines extend to the middle of the street, which means the entire city is considered private property.

Scientists used satellite data to study vertical land motion from 2015 to 2023. Findings revealed that regional studies substantially underestimate sea level rise. NASA projects more than double the expected rise by 2050.

We created Earth in Action to provide a lens into what's happening on our planet, as it happens. Whether it's something typical, like the current air temperature, or an extreme event like a major dust storm, we wanted to provide an opportunity for people to see them.

Along coastlines, where tides are typically magnified, they profoundly affect navigation, commerce, coastal flooding, water properties and sediment transport. Tides impact the flooding of rivers and, thus, influence the extent of their floodplain, which has cascading effects on biogeochemical and ecological processes.

The storm from Sunday into Monday has the potential to become a bomb cyclone, which occurs when central pressure drops at least 0.71 inches of mercury (24 millibars) in 24 hours or less. That rapid strengthening would generate an expansive and intense wind field.

To capture the biological impact of this extreme environment, I used a comprehensive suite of sensors and biomarker analyses. I wore a wireless electroencephalograph (EEG) system to monitor brain activity, sleep stages and neural signatures of stress and adaptation; the Oura Ring to continuously track sleep patterns, heart-rate variability and circadian-rhythm shifts; and the glucose monitor to follow metabolic responses in real time.

The 1993 erotic thriller Sliver should have ended differently: Zeke, played by William Baldwin, was scripted to fly a helicopter towards an active volcano, after Sharon Stone's character, Carly, reveals she's the killer. The pilot, Craig Hosking, had been tasked with flying low over Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, accompanied by the director of photography, Mike Benson, and his assistant Christopher Duddy, to film the bubbling lava and white plumes of smoke escaping from the Puu Oo vent.

Thursday's earthquake had an unusually strong effect because it occurred just a tenth of a mile below the surface, making it the shallowest quake recorded in South Carolina so far in 2026, according to state data.

Land is one of those things that can disappear even as you see it. It falls away beneath you, becoming merely the ground under your feet, because you're thinking about where you're going, or a place slowly blurring out of focus from the airplane window. Land is a primal word, primordial even, like lava. And it is a loaded word if, say, you're Indigenous or descend from a people whose land was taken from them.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By R.J. RICO, Associated Press Eight backcountry skiers were found dead and one remains missing after an avalanche near Lake Tahoe, authorities said Wednesday. The avalanche in Northern California's Sierra Nevada mountains is one of the deadliest in U.S. history. Here's a look at the others: 1910: Wellington, Washington 96 killed A massive wall of snow swept two Great Northern passenger trains into a gorge, killing 96 people. The trains had been stuck on the tracks for days because of bad weather, and some passengers had trekked into town, likely saving their lives.

Last November, two Washington residents filed a lawsuit accusing petroleum corporations of misleading the public for decades about fossil fuels' effect on climate change and how global warming is harming the planet and its inhabitants. Their lawsuit marks the latest addition to the growing number targeting Big Oil. The case, however, was novel, given the plaintiffs' damage claims: That increased carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning have intensified extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods and heat waves.

Although Kansas has no active volcanoes, the region marks the southern reach of the Midcontinent Rift System, a massive tectonic event that nearly split North America apart in Earth's distant past. When magma forced its way through the crust during that period, it left behind hardened igneous rock and deep fractures that remain buried thousands of feet underground.

Remembering the life and work of the geologist George Poulett Scrope, and salmon stories in this week's pick from the Nature archive.

Researchers have detected rising temperatures, bubbling gases and unusual sulfur formations inside Mexico's El Chichón volcano, also known as Chichonal. The changes were recorded by scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) during monitoring between June and December 2025. The volcano last erupted in 1982, killing at least 2,000 people in one of Mexico's deadliest volcanic disasters. Scientists observed elevated heat, shifting crater-lake chemistry, and gas emissions including hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, which can be hazardous in high concentrations.