Geologic Mapping

Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and countless visitors who live, recreate, consume resources, and face the risk of natural hazards in the region. This project produces high-quality, multi-purpose geologic maps, databases, and reports that portray our understanding of the region’s four-dimensional geologic framework. We conduct stratigraphic, structural, geomorphological...

We are focused on modernizing digital infrastructure by implementing a web-services based, enterprise GIS architecture focused on enabling scientific collaboration across geographically dispersed FEDMAP scientists. This project supports geologic mapping goals set forth by the National Geologic Mapping Act of 1992 and the vision of the National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program (NCGMP). Prior to...

This is a comprehensive scientific investigation of the geologic history and framework of the lower Colorado River. We are using geologic mapping in combination with stratigraphic, geochronologic, and geophysical studies to develop a holistic understanding of the river’s origin, the structural history of the landscape through which it flows, and the stratigraphic and geomorphic consequences of the...

The Pacific Northwest is an area created by active and complex geological processes. On its path to the Pacific Ocean, the Columbia River slices through a chain of active volcanoes located along the western margin of the U.S. in Washington, Oregon, and northern California. These volcanoes rest above the active Cascadia subduction zone, which is the boundary where the oceanic tectonic plate dives...

Landslides in the San Francisco Bay area (SFBA) of California impact people, infrastructure, and the environment, and are commonly induced by intense or prolonged rainfall associated with strong winter storms.

Landslides in the San Francisco Bay area (SFBA) of California impact people, infrastructure, and the environment, and are commonly induced by intense or prolonged rainfall associated with strong winter storms.

Landslides in the San Francisco Bay area (SFBA) of California impact people, infrastructure, and the environment, and are commonly induced by intense or prolonged rainfall associated with strong winter storms.

This project uses geologic and geomorphic mapping in the context of societally relevant problems in the Earth’s critical zone. Leveraging interdisciplinary research ties and interagency collaborations, it utilizes remote sensing data, corroborated with field observations, to determine i) the spatial distribution of geomorphic processes and ages of Quaternary deposits in the context of active...

This project uses geologic and geophysical mapping to build an earth-science framework for scientific investigations that include assessments of critical resources, such as groundwater, and of hazards, such as those resulting from earthquakes, in California west of and including the Sierra Nevada and Cascade arc. Questions of particular interest include: What are the geometries, slip rates, and...

Landslides in the San Francisco Bay area (SFBA) of California impact people, infrastructure, and the environment, and are commonly induced by intense or prolonged rainfall associated with strong winter storms.

Project objectives are to develop a modern probabilistic quantitative mineral resource assessment of Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and adjacent geologically similar areas that examines the potential for minerals-based economic development and trade within the region.

In an effort to better understand domestic resource potential, the USGS is investigating the genetic relationship between rare earth element deposits at Mountain Pass, California and Music Valley (Pinto Mountains, California) and extend these studies across a 130-km long belt of alkaline Proterozoic rocks in the southeast Mojave Desert. Such a combined study would significantly improve our...