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Publications

Results from our Program’s research and minerals information activities are published in USGS publications series as well as in outside journals.  To follow Minerals Information Periodicals, subscribe to the Mineral Periodicals RSS feed.

Filter Total Items: 2294

Common clay and shale

Common clay is a natural, fine-grained material composed of hydrous aluminum silicates. Shale is a laminated sedimentary rock formed by the consolidation of clay, mud and or silt.
Authors
R.L. Virta

Bromine

The element bromine is found principally as a dissolved species in seawater, evaporitic (salt) lakes and underground brines associated with petroleum deposits. Seawater contains about 65 parts per million of bromine or an estimated 907 Gt (100 trillion st). In the Middle East, the highly saline waters of the Dead Sea are estimated to contain 907 Mt (1 billion st) of bromine. Bromine also may be re
Authors
J.A. Ober

Borates

Four minerals represent 90 percent of the borates used by industry worldwide — the sodium borates (tincal and kernite), calcium borate (colemanite) and the sodium-calcium borate (ulexite). Borax is a white crystalline substance, chemically known as sodium tetraborate decahydrate, and is found naturally as the mineral tincal. Boric acid is a colorless crystalline solid sold in technical, national f
Authors
R.D. Crangle

Bauxite and alumina

The United States is reliant upon imports for nearly all of the bauxite that it consumes. Small amounts of bauxite and bauxitic clays are produced in Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia for nonmetallurgical uses. Metallurgical-grade bauxite (crude dry) imports in 2012 totaled 10.3 Mt (11.3 million st), 8 percent more than the quantity imported in 2011. Jamaica (46 percent), Guinea (27 percent) and Brazi
Authors
E. Lee Bray

Barite

Barite is the mineralogical name for barium sulfate, which is also referred to as barytes. The most basic marketable product is known as “crude barite,” which is barite that usually has undergone simple beneficiation methods, such as jigging, tabling and washing, or more complex methods, such as flotation, heavy-media separation and magnetic separation. Most barite ore requires some upgrading to m
Authors
M. Miller

Ball clay

Four companies — H.C. Spinks Clay Co., Inc., Imerys, Old Hickory Clay Co. and Unimin Corp. — mined ball clay in five U.S. states in 2012. Production, on the basis of preliminary data, was 900 kt (992,000 st), with an estimated value of $42.3 million. This was a slight increase in tonnage from 886 kt (977,000 st), with a value of $40.9 million in 2011. Tennessee was the leading ball clay producing
Authors
R.L. Virta

Mineral resource of the month: barite

No abstract available.
Authors
M. Michael Miller

Atmospheric propagation modeling indicates homing pigeons use loft-specific infrasonic ‘map’ cues

Results from an acoustic ray-tracing program using daily meteorological profiles are presented to explain ‘release-site biases’ for homing pigeons at three experimental sites in upstate New York where W. T. Keeton and his co-workers at Cornell University conducted extensive releases between 1968 and 1987 in their investigations of the avian navigational ‘map’. The sites are the Jersey Hill and Cas
Authors
Jonathan T. Hagstrum

Stratigraphy and chronology of Provo shoreline deposits and lake-level implications, Late Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, eastern Great Basin, USA

The Provo shoreline of Lake Bonneville formed following the Bonneville flood, and, based on previous dating, was formed during a period of overflow from about 17.5 to 15.0 cal. ka. In many places the Provo shoreline consists of a pair of distinct shorelines, one ∼3 m higher than the other. We present data from two cuts through double beaches to show that the upper beach is younger and represents s
Authors
David M. Miller, Charles G. Oviatt, John P. McGeehin

Ore genesis constraints on the Idaho cobalt belt from fluid inclusion gas, noble gas isotope, and ion ratio analyses--a reply

Burlinson (2013) questions the veracity of the H2 concentrations reported for fluid inclusion extracts from minerals in the Idaho cobalt belt (Table 2; Landis and Hofstra, 2012) and suggests that they are an analytical artifact of electron-impact mass spectrometry. He also declares that H2 should not be present in fluid inclusions because it is invariably lost by diffusion and is never detected in
Authors
Albert H. Hofstra, Gary P. Landis

Porphyry copper assessment of Europe, exclusive of the Fennoscandian Shield: Chapter K in Global mineral resource assessment

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collaborated with European geologists to assess resources in porphyry copper deposits in Europe, exclusive of Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland) and Russia. Porphyry copper deposits in Europe are Paleozoic and Late Cretaceous to Miocene in age. A number of the 31 known Phanerozoic deposits contain more than 1 million metric tons of contained copper
Authors
David M. Sutphin, Jane M. Hammarstrom, Lawrence J. Drew, Duncan E. Large, Byron R. Berger, Connie Dicken, Michael W. DeMarr, Mario with contributions from Billa, Joseph A. Briskey, Daniel Cassard, Andor Lips, Zdeněk Pertold, Emilian Roşu