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Publications

Listed below are publication products directly associated with the Geology, Energy & Minerals Science Center:

Filter Total Items: 1166

Genetic and grade and tonnage models for sandstone-hosted roll-type uranium deposits, Texas Coastal Plain, USA

The coincidence of a number of geologic and climatic factors combined to create conditions favorable for the development of mineable concentrations of uranium hosted by Eocene through Pliocene sandstones in the Texas Coastal Plain. Here 254 uranium occurrences, including 169 deposits, 73 prospects, 6 showings and 4 anomalies, have been identified. About 80 million pounds of U3O8 have been produced
Authors
Susan M. Hall, Mark J. Mihalasky, Kathleen Tureck, Jane M. Hammarstrom, Mark Hannon

Quantifying chemical weathering rates along a precipitation gradient on Basse-Terre Island, French Guadeloupe: new insight from U-series isotopes in weathering rinds

Inside soil and saprolite, rock fragments can form weathering clasts (alteration rinds surrounding an unweathered core) and these weathering rinds provide an excellent field system for investigating the initiation of weathering and long term weathering rates. Recently, uranium-series (U-series) disequilibria have shown great potential for determining rind formation rates and quantifying factors co
Authors
Jacqueline M. Engel, Linda May, Peter B. Sak, Jerome Gaillardet, Minghua Ren, Mark A. Engle, Susan L. Brantley

Building unified geospatial data for land-change modeling—A case study in the area of Richmond, Virginia

An effort to build a unified collection of geospatial data for use in land-change modeling (LCM) led to new insights into the requirements and challenges of building an LCM data infrastructure. A case study of data compilation and unification for the Richmond, Va., Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) delineated the problems of combining and unifying heterogeneous data from many independent localit
Authors
David I. Donato, Jason L. Shapiro

Bitumen prices and structural changes in North American crude oil markets

In an earlier report, changes in bitumen prices at Hardesty, Alberta, Canada, were modeled as the responses to changes in monthly prices of Hardesty light/medium crude oil for the period 2000–2006 with a simple error correction econometric model. This note re-examines that price relationship for the period 2009–2014. Over the period 2006–2014, there was also rapid growth in North American light oi
Authors
Emil D. Attanasi

Trace elements at the intersection of marine biological and geochemical evolution

Life requires a wide variety of bioessential trace elements to act as structural components and reactive centers in metalloenzymes. These requirements differ between organisms and have evolved over geological time, likely guided in some part by environmental conditions. Until recently, most of what was understood regarding trace element concentrations in the Precambrian oceans was inferred by extr
Authors
Leslie J. Robbins, Stefan V. Lalonde, Noah J. Planavsky, Camille A. Partin, Christopher T. Reinhard, Brian Kendall, Clint Scott, Dalton S. Hardisty, Benjamin C. Gill, Daniel S. Alessi, Christopher L. Dupont, Mak A. Saito, Sean A. Crowe, Simon W. Poulton, Andrey Bekker, Timothy W. Lyons, Kurt O. Konhauser

Geochemistry, Nd-Pb Isotopes, and Pb-Pb Ages of the Mesoproterozoic Pea Ridge Iron Oxide-Apatite–Rare Earth Element Deposit, Southeast Missouri

Iron oxide-apatite and iron oxide-copper-gold deposits occur within ~1.48 to 1.47 Ga volcanic rocks of the St. Francois Mountains terrane near a regional boundary separating crustal blocks having contrasting depleted-mantle Sm-Nd model ages (TDM). Major and trace element analyses and Nd and Pb isotope data were obtained to characterize the Pea Ridge deposit, improve identification of exploration t
Authors
Robert A. Ayuso, John F. Slack, Warren C. Day, Anne E. McCafferty

Abiotic raw-materials in life cycle impact assessments: An emerging consensus across disciplines

This paper captures some of the emerging consensus points that came out of the workshop “Mineral Resources in Life Cycle Impact Assessment: Mapping the path forward”, held at the Natural History Museum London on 14 October 2015: that current practices rely in many instances on obsolete data, often confuse resource depletion with impacts on resource availability, which can therefore provide inconsi
Authors
Johannes Drielsma, Ruth Allington, Thomas Brady, Jeroen Guinée, Jane M. Hammarstrom, Torsten Hummen, Andrea Russell-Vaccari, Laura Schneider, Guido Sonnemann, Pär Weihed

Beryllium—A critical mineral commodity—Resources, production, and supply chain

Beryllium is a lightweight metallic element used in a wide variety of specialty and industrial applications. As a function of its unique chemical and physical properties, such as a high stiffness-to-weight ratio, resistance to temperature extremes, and high thermal conductivity, beryllium cannot be easily replaced by substitute materials in applications where combinations of these properties make
Authors
Graham W. Lederer, Nora K. Foley, Brian W. Jaskula, Robert A. Ayuso

Cretaceous–Cenozoic burial and exhumation history of the Chukchi shelf, offshore Arctic Alaska

Apatite fission track (AFT) and vitrinite reflectance data from five exploration wells and three seafloor cores illuminate the thermal history of the underexplored United States Chukchi shelf. On the northeastern shelf, Triassic strata in the Chevron 1 Diamond well record apatite annealing followed by cooling, possibly during the Triassic to Middle Jurassic, which is a thermal history likely relat
Authors
William H. Craddock, David W. Houseknecht

Pb-Sr isotopic and geochemical constraints on sources and processes of lead contamination in well waters and soil from former fruit orchards, Pennsylvania, USA: A legacy of anthropogenic activities

Isotopic discrimination can be an effective tool in establishing a direct link between sources of Pb contamination and the presence of anomalously high concentrations of Pb in waters, soils, and organisms. Residential wells supplying water containing up to 1600 ppb Pb to houses built on the former Mohr orchards commercial site, near Allentown, PA, were evaluated to discern anthropogenic from geoge
Authors
Robert A. Ayuso, Nora K. Foley

Environmental drivers of differences in microbial community structure in crude oil reservoirs across a methanogenic gradient

Stimulating in situ microbial communities in oil reservoirs to produce natural gas is a potentially viable strategy for recovering additional fossil fuel resources following traditional recovery operations. Little is known about what geochemical parameters drive microbial population dynamics in biodegraded, methanogenic oil reservoirs. We investigated if microbial community structure was significa
Authors
Jenna L. Shelton, Denise M. Akob, Jennifer C. McIntosh, Noah Fierer, John R. Spear, Peter D. Warwick, John E. McCray

Ion-adsorption REEs in regolith of the Liberty Hill pluton, South Carolina, USA: An effect of hydrothermal alteration

Ion-adsorbed rare earth element (REE) deposits supply the majority of world heavy REE production and substantial light REE production, but relatively little is known of their occurrence outside Southeast Asia. We examined the distribution and forms of REEs on a North American pluton located in the highly weathered and slowly eroding South Carolina Piedmont. The Hercynian Liberty Hill pluton experi
Authors
Carleton R. Bern, Tiffany Yesavage, Nora K. Foley