Publications

The Upper Mississippian Heath Formation, which accumulated in the Big Snowy Trough of central Montana, has been known for three decades to contain mudrocks highly enriched in Zn, V, Mo, Ni and other metals, and source rocks for oil. The unit has more recently been recognized as a prospective tight oil play. Here we present petrographic, paleontologic, geochemical, and carbon and sulfur...

The Early to Middle Triassic Erdenet porphyry Cu-Mo deposit, in northern Mongolia, developed in a continent-continent arc collision zone, within the Central Asian orogenic belt. The porphyry system is related to multiple intrusions of crystal-crowded biotite granodiorite porphyry, which formed a composite stock about 900 m in diameter, with multiple porphyritic microgranodiorite dikes...

Excessive groundwater seepage can be a common engineering concern with earthen dams. The application of geophysical methods, whether for characterization or for long-term monitoring, to help inform mitigation strategies is becoming a more common addition to these investigations. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has completed geophysical investigations at several earthen dams in...

The transformation of kerogen to hydrocarbons in the early stages of oil generation is critical for understanding the resource potential of liquid-rich shale plays. Organic petrology commonly is used for visual evaluation of type, quality, and thermal maturity of organic matter, but the relationship of visual petrographic changes to chemical transformations is not well characterized. To...

Sediment mixing within sediment routing systems can exert a strong influence on the preservation of provenance signals that yield insight into the influence of environmental forcings (e.g., tectonism, climate) on the earth’s surface. Here we discuss two approaches to unmixing detrital geochronologic data in an effort to characterize complex changes in the sedimentary record. First we...

It has been shown that EPA Method 3060A does not adequately extract Cr(VI) from chromium ore processing residue (COPR). We modified various parameters of EPA 3060A toward understanding the transformation of COPR minerals in the alkaline extraction and improving extraction of Cr(VI) from NIST SRM 2701, a standard COPR-contaminated soil. Aluminum and Si were the major elements dissolved...

The State Geologic Map Compilation (SGMC) geodatabase of the conterminous United States (https://doi. org/10.5066/F7WH2N65) represents a seamless, spatial database of 48 State geologic maps that range from 1:50,000 to 1:1,000,000 scale. A national digital geologic map database is essential in interpreting other datasets that support numerous types of national-scale studies and...

The He, Ne, and Ar isotopic composition of fluid inclusions in ore and gangue minerals were analyzed to determine the source of volatiles in the high-grade Goldfield and Tonopah epithermal Au-Ag deposits in southwestern Nevada, USA. Ar and Ne are mainly atmospheric, whereas He has only a minor atmospheric component. Corrected 3He/4He ratios (with atmospheric He removed) range widely from...

A synthesis of field, biostratigraphic, detrital zircon geochronologic, and remote sensing data across north-central Nevada, United States, defines a thick, regionally extensive sheet of Middle–Upper Ordovician Valmy Formation quartzite that structurally overlies deformed early Paleozoic units of the Roberts Mountains allochthon. Late Paleozoic regional unconformities that record...

We combined geophysical, geochemical, mineralogical, and geological data to evaluate the regional presence of rare earth element (REE)−bearing minerals in heavy mineral sand deposits of the southeastern U.S. Coastal Plain. We also analyzed regional differences in these data to determine probable sedimentary provenance. Analyses of heavy mineral separates covering the region show strong

MapMark4 is a software package that implements the probability calculations in three-part mineral resource assessments. Functions within the software package are written in the R statistical programming language. These functions, their documentation, and a copy of this user’s guide are bundled together in R’s unit of shareable code, which is called a “package.” This user’s guide includes...

Three-part mineral resource assessment is a methodology for predicting, in a specified geographic region, both the number of undiscovered mineral deposits and the amount of mineral resources in those deposits. These predictions are based on probability calculations that are performed with computer software that is newly implemented. Compared to the previous implementation, the new...