Publications

No abstract available.

Direct measurements of the direction and strength of the earth's magnetic field have provided a knowledge of the field's form and behavior during the last few hundreds of years. For older times, however, it has been necessary to measure the magnetism of certain rocks to learn what the geomagnetic field was like. For example, when a lava flow solidifies (at temperatures near 1000°C) and...

Investigations were made of a landslide at the Dillon Dam site, Dillon, Colo., that included detailed laboratory and field analyses of the mineralogy, chemistry, and physical properties of landslide materials and the bedrock formations from which they were derived. These investigations provide an understanding of the relative importance of various factors contributing to the origin and

No abstract available.

New paleomagnetic and potassium-argon dating measurements have been made of basalt flows from Nunivak Island, Alaska, with the following results. (1) The best estimate of the age of the Brunhes/Matuyama polarity epoch boundary is found to be 0.694 m.y. (2) The best estimate of the age of the Gauss/Gilbert boundary is 3.32 m.y. (3) Three normally magnetized flows with ages from 0.93 to 0...

Analysis of cores collected from a sequence of lavas in Eastern Iceland has made possible an accurate calculation of the average rate of reversal of the Earth's magnetic field.

A paleomagnetic and K-Ar dating study of 44 upper Miocene and Pliocene volcanic units from the western United States suggests that the frequency of reversals of the earth's magnetic field during Pliocene time may have been comparable with that of the last 3.6 m.y. Although the data are too limited to permit the formal naming of any new polarity epochs or events, four polarity transitions...

The lower lava flow of Bed I in Olduvai Gorge, Tanganyika, carries natural remanent magnetization (NRM) having normal polarity. Thermal demagnetization experiments demonstrate the stability of this NRM. Thus the Olduvai geomagnetic polarity event, which was originally named from the upper lava flow in Bed I, is represented in its type locality by two normally magnetized lavas. These...

Recent paleomagnetic-radiometric data from six rhyolite domes in the Valles Caldera, New Mexico, indicate that the last change in polarity of the earth's magnetic field from reversed to normal (the Brunhes-Matuyama boundary) occurred at about 0.7 million years ago. A previously undiscovered geomagnetic polarity event, herein named the "Jaramillo normal event," occurred about 0.9 million...

This report covers the first 4 years (1952 through 1956) of a project to investigate landslides in the vicinity of the Fort Randall Reservoir in South Dakota and to determine the effects of the new reservoir on landslide activity.

No abstract available.

Geologic and geophysical investigations of the Loveland Basin landslide, which formed at the cut for the east portal of the Straight Creek tunnel, were made by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Public Road and the Colorado Department of Highways. The investigations indicate that the slide has a probable minimum volume of 500,000 cubic yards weighing 1,000...