Publications

Fluoride is considered beneficial to teeth and bones when consumed in low concentrations, but at elevated concentrations it can cause dental and skeletal fluorosis. Most fluoride-related health problems occur in poor, rural communities of the developing world where groundwater fluoride concentrations are high and the primary sources of drinking water are from community hand-pump borehole...

This study examines the relationship between depositional environment and sedimentary organic geochemistry in Lake Malawi, East Africa, and evaluates the relative significance of the various processes that control sedimentary organic matter (OM) in lacustrine systems. Total organic carbon (TOC) concentrations in recent sediments from Lake Malawi range from 0.01 to 8.80 wt% and average 2...

The purpose of this forum is to respond to a rebuttal submitted by Julian et al., Environ Manag 55:1–5, 2015 where they outlined their overall disagreement with the data preparation, methods, and interpretation of results presented in Gabriel et al. (Environ Manag 53:583–593, 2014). Here, we provide background information on the research premise presented in Gabriel et al. (Environ Manag...

Water availability and use are closely connected with energy development and use. Water cannot be delivered to homes, businesses, and industries without energy, and most forms of energy development require large amounts of water. The United States faces two significant and sometimes competing challenges: to provide sustainable supplies of freshwater for humans and ecosystems and to...

The U.S. Geological Survey has completed an assessment of the potential geologic carbon dioxide storage resource in the onshore areas of the United States. To provide geological context and input data sources for the resources numbers, framework documents are being prepared for all areas that were investigated as part of the national assessment. This report is the geologic framework...

A thick Quaternary alluvial section fills a sedimentary basin beneath the Santa Clara Valley, California, located within the San Andreas Fault system at the south end of San Francisco Bay. This section consists of an upper sequence about 1,000 feet thick containing eight sedimentary cycles and a lower fine-grained unit as thick as several hundred feet. Together these constitute the...

The U.S. Geological Survey estimated mean volumes of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources of 282 million barrels of conventional oil, 576 billion cubic feet of conventional gas, 1.3 billion barrels of continuous oil, and 4.6 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the Baltic Depression Province.

Following the geologic basin-scale assessment of technically accessible carbon dioxide storage resources in onshore areas and State waters of the United States, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that an area of about 130 million acres (or about 200,000 square miles) of Federal lands overlies these storage resources. Consequently, about 18 percent of the assessed area associated with...

The Eocene Green River Formation was deposited in two large Eocene saline lakes, Lake Uinta in the Uinta and Piceance Basins and Lake Gosiute in the Greater Green River Basin. Here we will discuss mass-movement deposits in just the Piceance Basin part of Lake Uinta.

A modeling approach that was used to predict the toxicity of dissolved single and multiple metals to trout is extended to stream benthic macroinvertebrates, freshwater zooplankton, and Daphnia magna. The approach predicts the accumulation of toxicants (H, Al, Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn) in organisms using 3 equilibrium accumulation models that define interactions between dissolved cations...

The U.S. Geological Survey collaborated with international colleagues to assess undiscovered resources in porphyry copper deposits in the Central Asian Orogenic Belt and eastern Tethysides. These areas host 20 known porphyry copper deposits, including the world class Oyu Tolgoi deposit in Mongolia that was discovered in the late 1990s. The study area covers major parts of the world’s...

The induced magnetic field and the remanent magnetic field of rock masses are important to geologic modeling based on Earth’s magnetic field data. The orientation of the induced magnetic field is approximately parallel to the orientation of Earth’s geomagnetic field and its intensity can be derived from measured magnetic susceptibilities of rocks in a study area. The orientation and...