Publications

Mineral resource assessments provide a synthesis of available information about distributions of mineral deposits in the Earth’s crust. The U.S. Geological Survey prepared a probabilistic mineral resource assessment of undiscovered resources in porphyry copper deposits in Central America and the Caribbean Basin in collaboration with geoscientists from academia and the minerals industry. The purpos

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean of 3,500 million metric tons (Mt) of undiscovered copper among 225 tracts around the world. Annual U.S. copper consumption is 2 Mt; global consumption is 20 Mt. The USGS assessed undiscovered copper in two deposit types that account for about 80 percent of the world's copper supply. Results of the assessment

The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (Public Law 110–140) directs the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to conduct a national assessment of potential geologic storage resources for carbon dioxide (CO2). The methodology used by the USGS for the national CO2 assessment follows up on previous USGS work. The methodology is non-economic and intended to be used at regional to subbasinal scales. Thi

Wireline logs were used to document the stratigraphic framework of Upper Devonian–Mississippian strata in the Arkoma Basin, and maps of high-gamma ray (HGR) log response were used to analyze the spatial distribution of potential source rocks in the Woodford–Chattanooga and Fayetteville–Caney shale-gas systems. The Woodford–Chattanooga shale is a transgressive deposit that accumulated on an arid co

During the last 80 years, Louisiana has been losing wetlands at an average rate of 62 km2/y (24 mi2/y) for an accumulated loss of approximately 4900 km2 (1900 mi2). The loss seems to be the combined result of natural and anthropogenic causes that are behind primarily land subsidence averaging about 10 mm/y (0.4 in/y) coinciding with a sea level rise now at 3 mm/y (0.1 in/y), both contributing to c

A regional sampling of gases from thermal springs near the LaBarge Field, Wyoming, USA to determine the extent of the total carbon dioxide system (TCDS) indicates that the system may extend up to 70 km to the northwest of the field. Geochemical evidence from noble gas isotopes, stable element isotopes, and gas composition provide the foundation for these conclusions. Samples from Soda Springs to t

In 2007, the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act authorized the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to conduct a national assessment of geologic storage resources for anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) and to evaluate the national technically recoverable hydrocarbon resources resulting from CO2 injection and storage through CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). In addition, the USGS is addressing s

Prediction of potential methane emission pathways from various sources into active mine workings or sealed gobs from longwall overburden is important for controlling methane and for improving mining safety. The aim of this paper is to infer strata separation intervals and thus gas emission pathways from standard well log data. The proposed technique was applied to well logs acquired through the Ma

The bootstrap method is commonly used to estimate the distribution of estimators and their associated uncertainty when explicit analytic expressions are not available or are difficult to obtain. It has been widely applied in environmental and geochemical studies, where the data generated often represent parts of whole, typically chemical concentrations. This kind of constrained data is generically

The northeastern Tibetan Plateau constitutes a transitional region between the low-relief physiographic plateau to the south and the high-relief ranges of the Qilian Shan to the north. Cenozoic deformation across this margin of the plateau is associated with localized growth of fault-cored mountain ranges and associated basins. Herein, we combine detailed structural analysis of the geometry of ran

Results of sulfur and oxygen isotope studies of sedimentary exhalative (SEDEX) Zn-Pb(-Ag-Au-Ba-F) deposits hosted in metamorphosed Paleozoic clastic and carbonate rocks of the Nome Complex, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, are consistent with data for similar deposits worldwide. Stable isotopic studies of the Nome Complex are challenging because the rocks have undergone Mesozoic blueschist- and greensch

The recent development of unconventional oil and natural gas resources in the United States builds upon many decades of research, which included resource assessment and the development of well completion and extraction technology. The Eastern Gas Shales Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1980s, investigated the gas potential of organic-rich, Devonian black shales in the Appala