Mineral belts in western Sierra County, New Mexico, suggested by mining districts, geology, and geochemical anomalies
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Bulletin↗
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Results for “Mining Geology”
Search indexed USGS publications on groundwater, aquifers, geologic maps, mineral resources and earthquakes. Explore source records by subject and place.
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Deep-sea mining: Integrating geology, oceanography, and engineering
[No abstract available]
Conference Paper↗
New York talcs, their geological features, mining, milling, and uses
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New York↗
A review of geology and mining in the Marble Mountains, southeastern California
Mining in the Marble Mountains of southeastern California was active in the earliest 1900s and gradually declined to very few active mines by 1959. Most mining consisted of hard-rock prospects and mines, with a few soft-rock prospects and one mine. The Marble Mountains are a 10 km by 30 km, gently NE-dipping dipping structural block composed of Proterozoic plutonic and metamorphic rocks, Paleozoic sedimentary rocks, and Jurassic granitoids exposed along the western anti-dip slopes, and Miocene volcanic and sedimentary rocks exposed along the crest of the range and eastern dip slopes. Mineralization occurred in metamorphic aureoles of intrusions, along dikes, as contact metasomatic replacement bodies in carbonate rocks, or adjacent to or along thrust faults. Mineralization locally formed gold, copper, malachite, azurite, bornite, chalcopyrite, magnetite, specularite, limonite, quartz, epidote, actinolite, and garnet. Hard-rock prospects and mines are clustered into five locations. The mines are small open pits, a few consist of a shaft or two with a few adits, most are just a single shaft or adit. There are a few small open-pit marble mines, and one is an open pit fossil mine. Eight prospects were developed in the Miocene tuffaceous deposits; three in the northwest and five prospects, and a single adit, in the south. Most of the Marble Mountains are now in the Trilobite Wilderness or adjacent Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, and the area of the Golden Cycle district (Castle Mine area) and prospect areas in the southern part of the range are in the Mojave Trails National Monument. The Iron Hat mine, several nearby areas, and the Trilobite mine area are privately owned. No rock or mineral mines are currently active, but the Trilobite mine in the south end of the range is still open to the public.
California↗
A cotangent ruler for simplifying the graphic solution of problems in structural geology
The cotangent ruler is a device for measuring directly the dip of contoured surfaces, or, conversely, for constructing contours that represent planes of known dip. It greatly simplifies the graphic solution of problems in structural geology, and has several specialized applications to problems commonly encountered in mining geology and areal geologic mapping.
Economic Geology↗
Behaviour of abandoned room and pillar mines in Illinois
Little comprehensive information has been reported on the behaviour of room-and-pillar mines. The objective of this paper is to present case data on mine failures in the Illinois basin for use in practice. Presented are results of an ongoing study and details on the site characteristics of cases where sags have developed on the surface. Site data are reported to show the geologic, mining, and sag conditions that existed. Sags mainly develop from pillar, floor, or pillar-floor failure. The character of the sags depends upon the type of mine failure as well as the overburden response. Preliminary results show that the statistical no-risk tributary pressure decreases over 300% as the mine age increases from about 2 to 100 years at a long-term value of approximately 300 psi (2070 kPa). As more information is collected and more analysis is done, the allowable tributary pressure can be determined for different site conditions. A plot is also reported that depicts the relationship of the maximum subsidence to site conditions. It was found that the modified subsidence factor was heavily dependent upon the overburden rock thickness. ?? 1989 Chapman & Hall Ltd.
International Journal of Mining and Geological Eng↗
Selected Geological Survey, U.S. Bureau of Mines, and Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys reports and maps on Alaska released during 1976, indexed by quadrangle
This open-file report lists all Geological Survey, U.S. Bureau of Mines, and State of Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys reports and maps on the geology, geophysics, and mineral and water resources of Alaska published or released to open files in 1976. They are listed by the quadrangles (scale 1:250,000) into which Alaska has been subdivided for topographic mapping (p. 3). As these three agencies also issued reports and maps on other subjects, the following lists are selected in the sense that such documents are not included. Most of the listed reports and maps bear a 1976 imprint date; a few with a 1975 imprint date actually were not delivered until 1976. Also included are a few that I overlooked when I prepared a similar index of reports and maps issued in 1975. Reports that deal with regional tectonic hypotheses, regional syntheses, Alaska as a whole, or with areas that can not be identified with a specific quadrangle are listed under Alaska - General, as are statistical presentations, indexes, and the like. Reports and maps that deal with offshore areas not within quadrangle boundaries are listed under Offshore Areas. The Alaska - General and Offshore Areas lists appear before the alphabetically arranged quadrangle listings. This index is intended to bring up to date the other indexes of this series, which are listed on p. 2.
Alaska↗
Selected Geological Survey, U.S. Bureau of Mines, and Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical surveys reports and maps on Alaska released during 1978, indexed by quadrangle
This open—file report lists all Geological Survey, U.S. Bureau of Mines, and State of Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys reports and maps on the geology, geophysics, and mineral and water resources of Alaska published or released to open files in 1978. They are listed by the quadrangles (scale 1:250,000) into which Alaska has been subdivided for topographic mapping (p. 4). As these three agencies also issued reports and maps on other subjects, the following lists are selected in the sense that such documents are not included. Most of the listed reports and maps bear a 1978 imprint date; a few with earlier imprint dates actually were not delivered until 1978. Reports that deal with regional tectonic hypotheses, regional syntheses, Alaska as a whole, or with areas that can not be identified with a specific quadrangle are listed under Alaska — General, as are statistical presentations, indexes, and the like. Reports and maps that deal with offshore areas not within quadrangle boundaries are listed under Offshore Areas. The Alaska — General and Offshore Areas lists appear before the alphabetically arranged quadrangle listings.
Alaska↗
Geologic estimates and future costs of strip mining coal
Geologic coal-resource appraisals, which typically describe the location and general characteristics of coalbeds, do not generally provide enough information to estimate the cost of developing the resource or to predict the escalation of costs expected to result from physical depletion. This paper considers the nature of data and methods of appraisal required to provide this cost information to policymakers. Illinois is used as a prototype area for analysis because of its long history of coal mining and its demonstrated coal reserve base of strippable coal that exceeds all but two of the States in the United States. Evidence of gradual depletion of Illinois strippable coal reserves is provided by declining labor productivity, decreasing average mine size, and increasing overburden depth. The procedures used to estimate the costs of mining remaining deposits indicate that the physical characteristics that will affect mining costs most significantly are depth of overburden, thickness of coal seam, and areal extent of coal of the minable reserve blocks. Findings presented here provide guidelines for the collection of economic and geologic data in order to improve coal appraisals, particularly those currently in progress in the Western United States.
Energy Systems and Policy↗
Geology and mineral resources of the North Absaroka Wilderness and vicinity, Park County, Wyoming, with sections on mineralization of the Sunlight mining region and geology and mineralization of the Cooke City mining district, and a section on aeromagnetic interpretation
SUMMARY The North Absaroka Wilderness is approximately 560 square miles (1,450 km 2 ) of rugged scenic mountainous terrain that adjoins the eastern boundary of Yellowstone National Park in northwestern Wyoming. The area was studied during 1970, 1971, and 1972 by personnel of the U. S. Geological Survey and the U. S. Bureau of Mines to evaluate its mineral-resource potential as required by the Wilderness Act of 1964. This evaluation is based on a search of the literature courthouse and production records, geologic field mapping, field inspection of claims and prospects, analyses of bedrock and stream-sediment samples, and an aeromagnetic survey. The North Absaroka Wilderness is underlain almost entirely by andesitic and basaltic volcanic rocks of Eocene age. These volcanics rest on deformed sedimentary rocks of Paleozoic and, locally, of Mesozoic age that are exposed at places along the northern and eastern edges of the wilderness. Dikes and other igneous intrusive bodies cut both the volcanic and sedimentary rocks. A nearly flat detachment fault, the Heart Mountain fault, and a related steep break-away fault have displaced middle and upper Paleozoic rocks and some of the older part of the volcanic sequence to the southeast. A much greater thickness of volcanic rocks was found to be involved in Heart Mountain faulting than had previously been recognized; however, most of the volcanic rocks and many of the intrusives were emplaced after Heart Mountain faulting. Local folding and high-angle faulting in mid-Eocene time have deformed all but the youngest part of the volcanic sequence in the southeastern part of the wilderness. This deformation is interpreted as the last pulse of Laramide orogeny. The results of this study indicate that the mineral-resource potential of the wilderness is minimal. Bentonite, petroleum, low-quality coal, and localized deposits of uranium and chromite have been produced in the surrounding region from rocks that underlie the volcanic rocks; but such deposits, if present in the wilderness, would be too deeply buried, too small, or too sporadically distributed to be profitably located and exploited. Copper and gold mines and prospects are present on the fringes of the wilderness, but otherwise the area seems to be devoid of economically valuable concentrations of metallic minerals. No surface evidence of geothermal-energy potential was found. Known mineral deposits in the vicinity of the North Absaroka Wilderness are associated with intrusive rocks. From the Cooke City mining district, just north of the wilderness, replacement deposits in Upper Cambrian carbonate rocks may extend a short distance into the north edge of the wilderness, In the Sunlight mining region, an enclave nearly surrounded by the wilderness, mineralization occurs in veins and is disseminated in volcanic and plutonic rocks. Richer concentrations of metallic minerals may occur in carbonate rocks adjacent to intrusive bodies at depth beneath the volcanic rocks in the Sunlight region. A few small intrusive bodies occur in the wilderness, but no significant associated mineralization was detected. Aeromagnetic data indicate that other intrusives not exposed by erosion may occur in the wilderness; however, no significant metamorphism or alteration is evident at the surface to indicate their presence. Although most of the rocks of the wilderness are of igneous origin, they are all so old (Eocene) that it is unlikely that they retain any original heat. The Pleistocene rhyolitic ash-flow tuffs in the southwestern part of the wilderness were erupted from sources in Yellowstone National Park just to the west; however, in the wilderness these tuffs are too thin to contain any residual heat.
Wyoming↗
Geology of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository site, Nevada
Yucca Mountain, located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, has been recommended by the President for a mined geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste. This field trip will examine the geologic and hydrologic setting for Yucca Mountain, as well as specific results of the site characterization program. The field trip will visit the locations for underground in situ testing in the “Exploratory Studies Facility” plus several locales for surface-based tests. Discussions will comprise selected topics of Yucca Mountain geology, unsaturated zone hydrology, saturated zone hydrology and geochemistry and will include the probabilistic volcanic hazard analysis and the seismicity and seismic hazard analyses in the Yucca Mountain area. Emphasis of the field trip is the relationship of the geology and hydrology of Yucca Mountain to the performance of a repository that will safely isolate nuclear waste.
Nevada↗
Analogues to features and processes of a high-level radioactive waste repository proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nevada
Natural analogues are defined for this report as naturally occurring or anthropogenic systems in which processes similar to those expected to occur in a nuclear waste repository are thought to have taken place over time periods of decades to millennia and on spatial scales as much as tens of kilometers. Analogues provide an important temporal and spatial dimension that cannot be tested by laboratory or field-scale experiments. Analogues provide one of the multiple lines of evidence intended to increase confidence in the safe geologic disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Although the work in this report was completed specifically for Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the proposed geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste under the U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the applicability of the science, analyses, and interpretations is not limited to a specific site. Natural and anthropogenic analogues have provided and can continue to provide value in understanding features and processes of importance across a wide variety of topics in addressing the challenges of geologic isolation of radioactive waste and also as a contribution to scientific investigations unrelated to waste disposal. Isolation of radioactive waste at a mined geologic repository would be through a combination of natural features and engineered barriers. In this report we examine analogues to many of the various components of the Yucca Mountain system, including the preservation of materials in unsaturated environments, flow of water through unsaturated volcanic tuff, seepage into repository drifts, repository drift stability, stability and alteration of waste forms and components of the engineered barrier system, and transport of radionuclides through unsaturated and saturated rock zones.
Professional Paper↗
Minerals, lands, and geology for the common defence and general welfare, Volume 2, 1879-1904 : A history of geology in relation to the development of public-land, federal-science, and mapping policies and the development of mineral resources in the United States during the first 25 years of the U.S. Geological Survey
In the traditional view of the Survey's first 25 years, which are the subject of much of this volume, John Wesley Powell, with his broad view of science and advanced ideas of land and water in the West, is the heroic figure. Clarence King is dismissed as brilliant but with a limited view of science as mining geology, and Charles D. Walcott is regarded primarily as a brilliant paleontologist chosen by Powell to succeed him. The Survey's first quarter century, however, spanned a watershed in American history that separated a primarily rural and agrarian nation and a primarily urban and industrial nation, a nation intent on conquering the continent and isolated from the Old World and a nation involved in world politics, a nation that believed in the virtues of competition and limited government and a nation that saw the virtue of cooperation and insisted on reform and regulation to ensure equal opportunities to all. Science itself changed during this period. The age of instruments was just beginning when the Survey was established; by the turn of the century, instruments had almost revolutionized science and the era of the lone investigator had to give way to an era of organized effort in the solution of problems.
Book↗
The road to Yucca Mountain—Evolution of nuclear waste disposal in the United States
The generation of electricity by nuclear power and the manufacturing of atomic weapons have created a large amount of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. There is a world-wide consensus that the best way to protect mankind and the environment is to dispose of this waste in a deep geologic repository. Initial efforts focused on salt as the best medium for disposal, but the heat generated by the radioactive waste led many earth scientists to examine other rock types. In 1976, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) wrote to the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), predecessor agency of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), suggesting that there were several favorable environments at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), and that the USGS already had extensive background information on the NTS. Later, in a series of communications and one publication, the USGS espoused the favorability of the thick unsaturated zone. After the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (1982), the DOE compiled a list of nine favorable sites and settled on three to be characterized. In 1987, as the costs of characterizing three sites ballooned, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act directing the DOE to focus only on Yucca Mountain in Nevada, with the proviso that if anything unfavorable was discovered, work would stop immediately. The U.S. DOE, the U.S. DOE national laboratories, and the USGS developed more than 100 detailed plans to study various earth-science aspects of Yucca Mountain and the surrounding area, as well as materials studies and engineering projects needed for a mined geologic repository. The work, which cost more than 10 billion dollars and required hundreds of man-years of work, culminated in a license application submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2008.
Environmental & Engineering Geoscience↗
Seismicity and shear strain in the southern Great Basin of Nevada and California
This study examines the relationship between the distribution of small earthquakes (M L ≤4.3) and mechanisms of strain accumulation and relaxation in an area with long repeat times between large events, the Southern Great Basin Seismic Network (SGBSN) region. The Great Basin is a unique continental extensional province characterized by normal and strike-slip faulting, high heat flow, crust of thin to normal thickness, and high elevations. The SGBSN is operated to provide data to address suitability issues pertaining to Yucca Mountain, Nevada which is being evaluated as a potential site for a national mined geologic nuclear waste repository. Suitability issues include estimation of the probability of occurrence of future damaging earthquakes, the characterization of the mechanisms that drive hydrologic flow, and the identification of fractures (faults) that might act as flow conduits or barriers. This study attempts to explain the distribution of small earthquakes in terms of spatial variations in the shear strain field; where strain concentrates there should be a greater number of small earthquakes. Strain field models are constructed under the assumption that long term fault behavior perturbs an otherwise uniform strain field. These strain field models are then interpreted with regard to the regional tectonics and site suitability issues. Modeling results provide one possible explanation of why earthquake clusters cover regions much larger than the surface projections of any of mapped major faults; clusters in a wide band along and extending northeast of the northern half of the Furnace Creek fault may correspond to elevated shear strains along the fault and a broad cluster in the Pahranagat Shear Zone may be associated with shear strain arising from a distribution of smaller localized faults. The relatively large number of small earthquakes in the southern and eastern portions of the Nevada Test Site is consistent with the strain field models. A minimum in shear strain at Yucca Mountain is predicted by all models consistent with an almost total lack of earthquakes observed there. The region to the west of the Death Valley/Furnace Creek fault system, the portion of the study area with the most active deformation but few small earthquakes, is an area of low shear strain. A possible reason for this is that the fault configuration in the area is optimal for accommodating regional deformation via large earthquakes or creep. While there is also a relative lack of earthquakes at Yucca Mountain, this may be indicative of a lack of accumulating strain energy and thus, a lower potential for a large earthquake.
Journal of Geophysical Research↗
Memorandum describing the geology and ground-water conditions in the vicinity of Simpsonville, Maryland
This memorandum summarizes briefly the result of a study of the ground-water conditions of a small area near Simpsonville, Maryland, underlain chiefly by the Guilford granite (granite-pegmatite) of early Paleozoic or late Precambrian age. The records. of 15 wells and 5 sprints are given, as are t he sample-study legs of 3 test wells drilled at the site of a planned industrial labratory. A geologic map revised some-what from a published map by Cloos and Broedel is included (fig. 1). The study of the hydrology in the vicinity of Simpsonville was undertaken as a part of the ground-water investigations in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Geology, Mines and Water Resources. It provides ground-water data in addition to those already available, as a basis for a decision by the Maryland Water Resources Commission in regard to the application of an industrial laboratory to appropriate 200,000 gallons of ground water a day at a site about half a mile northwest of Simpsonville (approximately 12 miles southwest of Baltimore). Also, it supplements existing information on the occurrence of ground water in crystalline rocks of the type underlying the site, which are widespread in the Piedmont of Maryland and other States.
South Carolina↗
Selected Geological Survey, U.S. Bureau of Mines, and Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys reports and maps on Alaska released during 1979, indexed by quadrangle
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Open-File Report↗