Publications

Once commonly used in coal and wood-burning stoves, U.S. production of mica has all but ceased.

echniques for processing frequency-domain electromagnetic (FDEM) data that address systematic instrument errors and random noise are presented, improving the ability to invert these data for meaningful earth models that can be quantitatively interpreted. A least-squares calibration method, originally developed for airborne electromagnetic datasets, is implemented for a ground-based...

On the Beagle voyage, Charles Darwin first noted the creation and subsidence of ocean islands1, establishing in geology’s infancy that island freeboard changes with time. Hotspot ocean islands have an obvious mechanism for freeboard change through the growth of the bathymetric anomaly, or swell2, on which the islands rest. Models for swell development indicate that flexural9, thermal2,3...

Two uppermost Carboniferous–Lower Triassic fluvial–lacustrine sections in the Tarlong–Taodonggou half-graben, southern Bogda Mountains, NW China, comprise a 1834 m-thick, relatively complete sedimentary and paleoclimatic record of the east coast of mid-latitude NE Pangea. Depositional environmental interpretations identified three orders (high, intermediate, and low) of sedimentary...

A response by Gregory P. Meeker and colleagues to a commentary on their article on the development of a signature for detection of residual dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings is presented

Increasingly, groundwater management requires more accurate hydrogeologic frameworks for groundwater models. These complex issues have created the demand for innovative approaches to data collection. In complicated terrains, groundwater modelers benefit from continuous high‐resolution geologic maps and their related hydrogeologic‐parameter estimates. The USGS and its partners have...

From Mt. Vesuvius to Hawaii, molten rock continues to leave its mark.

From cow paths to freeways, we seldom appreciate what went into America's highway system.

The Cassini Division in Saturn's rings contains a series of eight named gaps, three of which contain dense ringlets. Observations of stellar occultations by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer onboard the Cassini spacecraft have yielded 40 accurate and precise measurements of the radial position of the edges of all of these gaps and ringlets. These data reveal suggestive...

After more than 50 close flybys of Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, it has become evident that features similar in morphology to terrestrial lakes and seas exist in Titan's polar regions. As Titan progresses into northern spring, the much more numerous and larger lakes and seas in the north-polar region suggested by Cassini RADAR data, are becoming directly illuminated for the first time...

The planet's layers - particularly the earth's crust - provide many of life's essential building blocks.

The abundance of new borehole data from recent coal bed natural gas development in the Powder River Basin was utilized by the U.S. Geological Survey for the most comprehensive evaluation to date of coal resources and reserves in the Northern Wyoming Powder River Basin assessment area. It is the second area within the Powder River Basin to be assessed as part of a regional coal assessment...