Publications

The structure of the Earth’s crust (the outer shell of the earth above the M-discontinuity) has been intensively studied in many places by use of geophysical methods. The velocity of seismic compressional waves in the crust and in the upper mantle varies from place to place in the conterminous United States. The average crust is thick in the eastern two-thirds of the United States, in which the cr

The U.S. Geological Survey is preparing a series of terrain atlases of the Sino-Soviet bloc of nations for use in a possible nuclear-test detection program. Part of this project is concerned with the compilation and evaluation of crustal-structure data. To date, a compilation has been made of data from Russian publications that discuss seismic refraction and gravity studies of crustal structure. A

A reversed seismic-refraction profile was recorded in the Colorado Plateaus Province from Hanksville, Utah, to Chinle, Arizona, The velocity of Pg is 6.2 km/sec, and the true velocity of Pn is 7.8 km/sec, Waves identified as reflections indicate that an intermediate layer in the crust has a velocity of approximately 6.8 km/sec. Thickness of the crust is 43 km at Chinle and 40 km at Hanksville. The

A study of first-arrival amplitudes from 6 water shotpoints and 7 drill-hole shotpoints in parts of central and western United States indicate a variation of over 100 to 1 between the best and poorest shotpoints. Water shotpoints are, in general, superior to drill-hole shotpoints; however, one drill-hole shotpoint produced higher signal amplitudes than more than half of the water shotpoints. Signa

The U.S. Geological Survey has recorded more than 300 seismograms from more than 50 underground nuclear explosions. Most were recorded at distances of less than 1,000 km. These seismograms have been studied to obtain travel times and amplitudes which have been presented in reports on crustal structure and in a new series of nuclear shot reports. This report describes preliminary studies of first m

A seismic-refraction profile indicates that the crust of the Earth increases in thickness by as much as 5 km over a horizontal distance of less than 25 km northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. This feature correlates with a decrease in the Bouguer anomaly and an increase in the average surface altitude.

Seismic-refraction measurements from chemical explosions near San Francisco, California, and Fallon and Eureka, Nevada, were made along a line extending nearly 700 km inland from San Francisco across the Coast Ranges, Great Valley, Sierra Nevada, and Basin and Range Province. The velocity of Pg in the Basin and Range Province was found to be 6.0 km/sec. Between Fallon and Eureka the velocity of Pn

This paper treats the results of a study of seismic waves generated by eight nuclear explosions and recorded at 31 locations between the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and Ordway, Colorado. The line of recording stations crosses the eastern part of the Basin and Range Province, the Colorado Plateau, the southern Rocky Mountains, and extends into the Great Plains. In the eastern Basin and Range Province an

The U.S. Geological Survey, with the assistance of United ElectroDynamics, Inc., completed ten weeks of seismic-refraction field work during the summer of 1962 in the southwestern part of the United States. This work was a continuation of a program initiated in 1961 to study traveltimes and seismic propagation paths in the earth?s crust and upper mantle in the western United States. A total of 761

Seismic waves generated by underground nuclear and chemical explosions have been recorded in a network of nearly 2,000 stations in the western conterminous United States as a part of the VELA UNIFORM program. The network extends from eastern Colorado to the California coastline and from central Idaho to the border of the United States and Mexico. The speed of compressional waves in the upper-mantl

During 1963 the U.S. Geological Survey, with the assistance of United ElectroDynamics, Inc., recorded five separate reversed seismic profiles. In addition to these profiles, the U.S. Geological Survey participated in a seismic-calibration program for the DRIBBLE experiment at Tatum Dome, Mississippi, a 20,000-pound shot near Dexter, Missouri, and in a cooperative seismic experiment in the Lake Sup

The value of seismic-model studies as an aid to understanding wave propagation in the Earth's crust was recognized by early investigators (Tatel and Tuve, 1955). Preliminary model results were very promising, but progress in model seismology has been restricted by two problems: (1) difficulties in the development of models with continuously variable velocity-depth functions, and (2) difficulties i