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US Geological Survey

US federal agency that studies and monitors natural hazards, water, ecosystems, and geological resources, including earthquakes, floods, and landslides.

Known aliases

  • United States Geological Survey
  • U.S. Geological Survey
  • US Geological Survey
  • USGS
  • U.S.G.S.

Current stories

scienceOne report1 publisher

Reintroduced Pacific pocket mice are already breeding at Camp Pendleton's North San Mateo

San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance provided 50 Pacific pocket mice to USGS this spring to found a third reintroduced population at Camp Pendleton. Two of the three reintroduced populations are now on the Marine Corps base.

Publishers:popsci.com

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−5
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence45
scienceOne report1 publisher

Deep-sea sulfide rocks combusted on their own after USGS scientists dried and crushed them

USGS researchers say two of 57 seafloor sulfide rocks from the Escanaba Trough heated past 100 C on their own in the lab. The agency says the hazard deserves attention before anyone mines these deposits, on evidence so far limited to processed samples from a single trough.

Publishers:sciencealert.com

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence45
scienceConfirmed4 publishers

Magnitude 7.7 quake on a shallow inland fault shakes about 4.6 million people in Panama

Panama was struck on Friday by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake near the village of Pitaloza Arriba, the USGS said. A USGS seismologist says the tsunami threat from the shallow, inland rupture has largely receded; shaking and aftershocks are the hazard that remains.

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers
Builder
Builder 16%
Operator
Operator 69%
Investor
Investor 15%

Reality

Evidence64
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

Landsat images show farmland and aquaculture along Thailand's Bang Pakong River under water

NASA's Landsat images show farmland and aquaculture along Prachin Buri's Bang Pakong River flooded on 2 October 2026, set against the same season in 2025. The pair is strong evidence of how far the water spread that day and weaker evidence of what caused it.

Publishers:nasa.gov

Reality

Evidence65
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−5
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence60
scienceOne report1 publisher

253-year coral core from Olowalu records land runoff rising with West Maui's sugarcane era

University of Hawai'i and USGS scientists found runoff signals in a 253-year Olowalu coral core climbed sharply as 20th-century sugarcane spread. The record gives West Maui reef restoration a dated reference, though the sugarcane link rests on timing in one coral colony.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+5
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
scienceOne report1 publisher

Lubbock farmer says about 90% of her dryland cotton died in the 2026 drought

Lacy Cotter-Vardeman says roughly 90% of her Lubbock County dryland cotton died in the 2026 drought. So far, her farm is the only evidence that this was a new kind of loss, worse than the crop abandonment of 2011 and 2022.

Publishers:nasa.gov

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives45
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

Six deep-ocean buoys recorded the Pacific oscillating for more than ten hours after the Kamchatka tsunami

Six NOAA DART buoys still showed the Pacific oscillating at 30- to 80-minute periods more than ten hours after Kamchatka's M8.8 quake in July 2025. The authors say that rhythm could help tsunami warnings, but their account stops before explaining how a warning center would use it.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives50
Confidence50
scienceOne report1 publisher

El Nino at a record 3.11C anomaly tilts North American winter odds toward a wet South

University of Maine data put the 2026 El Nino's daily anomaly at 3.11C, above a record that had stood since November 2015. The USGS says such events tilt winter odds toward a wet South and a dry Northwest and Ohio Valley, but do not guarantee any pattern.

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence40
scienceOne report1 publisher

NASA pairs two Landsat scenes with a rainfall summary to show the Murchison in bloom

Above-average June rain and a very wet August in Western Australia's Murchison brought carpets of wildflowers that Landsat 8 caught in late August, in a before-and-after pair where the ground is greener and the flowers themselves go uncounted.

Publishers:nasa.gov

Reality

Evidence68
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+18
Incentives45
Confidence62
scienceOne report1 publisher

273 seismic stations resolve the Los Angeles basin in three dimensions

A new model puts up to 6.2 miles of sediment under downtown and sharpens the basin's edges, the geometry a USGS seismologist credits for Santa Monica's unexpected damage in 1994. It is an input to shaking simulations.

Publishers:livescience.com

Reality

Evidence72
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+20
Incentives35
Confidence66
scienceConfirmed6 publishers

Nepal's deluge began as a glacier falling a kilometre into a river it then dammed

Satellite and seismic analyses point to ice that snapped off above 5,000 metres, blocked the Lhende Khola and burst through hours later. Almost no rain preceded it, which is why the region's flood warning tools had nothing to read.

Perspective Coverage

6 publishers
Builder
Builder 43%
Operator
Operator 38%
Investor
Investor 19%

Reality

Evidence74
Adoption62
Hype gap−8
Incentives34
Confidence70
investOne report1 publisher

Tokyo stops subsidising panels that are roughly 72% Chinese-made

An emergency order now screens transformers and inverters at 69 kV and above, while Tokyo rewrites its solar subsidy table toward perovskite, moving China de-risking out of the tariff schedule and into the purchase order.

Publishers:en.sedaily.com

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption34
Hype gap+19
Incentives55
Confidence38
scienceOne report1 publisher

Landsat's guano record backdates 18 emperor penguin colonies by 17 years on average

The archive that pushed Smyley Island's founding back to at least 1989 also shows the colony re-forming beside grounded icebergs after a probable total failure in 2022. That re-forming pattern is awkward for projections that hold breeding sites still.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption48
Hype gap+14
Incentives34
Confidence52
scienceOne report1 publisher

Appalachia carries 55 percent of US landslide exposure with the least means to mitigate it

A study in Earth's Future overlaid American landslide susceptibility with local socioeconomics for the first time. Where the maps are reddest, the households underneath them have the least money to engineer a slope or leave it.

Publishers:sciencenews.org

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption34
Hype gap+8
Incentives38
Confidence58
scienceOne report1 publisher

A San Andreas slip claim arrives without a number, and before peer review

A San Jose State team says the fault under Santa Clara County is not decelerating. The rate, its uncertainty band, and the journal are all still missing.

Reality

Evidence18
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+52
Incentives55
Confidence30
scienceOne report1 publisher

Yellowstone's geysers run on water, and 15,000 years of lake mud says drought can throttle them

A Montana State-led study in PNAS reads pollen, charcoal, arsenic and diatoms from closed lakes in the Lower Geyser Basin. Its framing: dry centuries brought less hydrothermal activity and more fire.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence57
Adoption24
Hype gap+13
Incentives63
Confidence50
productOne report1 publisher

Geologic hydrogen's firmest numbers come from mine vents, not reservoirs

A decade of borehole data from Ontario's Kidd Creek mine puts about 140 tonnes of hydrogen a year escaping unused. That is roughly where the evidence stands.

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption20
Hype gap+24
Incentives66
Confidence55