Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publications

Filter Total Items: 7221

Meteoroid mayhem in Ole Virginny: Source of the North American tektite strewn field

New seismic reflection data from Chesapeake Bay reveal a buried, 85-km-wide, 1.5-2.0-km-deep, peak-ring impact crater, carved through upper Eocene to Lower Cretaceous sedimentary strata and into underlying pre-Mesozoic crystalline basement rocks. A polymictic, late Eocene impact breccia, composed mainly of locally derived sedimentary debris (determined from four continuous cores), surrounds and pa
Authors
C. Wylie Poag, David S. Powars, Lawrence J. Poppe, Robert B. Mixon

Stratigraphy of the Mississippi-Alabama shelf and the Mobile River incised-valley system

The Mobile River incised-valley system located in the northern Gulf of Mexico occupies an area from southern Alabama through Mobile Bay to the outer Mississippi-Alabama continental shelf. During the Wisconsinan regression, this incised-valley system was fluvially eroded and extended across the exposed shelf to a shelf-margin delta complex. The last postglacial transgression drowned the entrenched
Authors
Jack L. Kindinger, Peter S. Balson, James G. Flocks

Acoustic mapping as an environmental management tool: I. detection of barrels of low-level radioactive waste, Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, California

The oceans have been and will continue to be disposal sites for a wide variety of waste products. Often these wastes are not dumped at the designated sites or transport occurs during or after dumping, and, subsequent attempts to monitor the effects the waste products have on the environment are inadequate because the actual location of the waste is not known. Acoustic mapping of the seafloor with
Authors
Herman A. Karl, William C. Schwab, A. St. C. Wright, David E. Drake, John L. Chin, William W. Danforth, Edward Ueber

Geochemical changes in crude oil spilled from the Exxon Valdez supertanker into Prince William Sound, Alaska

North Slope crude oil spilled from the T/V Exxon Valdez in March 1989 and contaminated about 500 km of Prince William Sound shoreline. Aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons in oil samples collected in August 1990 and June 1992 from beaches on six islands impacted by the spill have been compared with the hydrocarbons from North Slope crude oil taken from the stricken tanker. Degradation processes hav
Authors
Frances D. Hostettler, Keith A. Kvenvolden

Decade-scale trend in sea water salinity revealed through d18O analysis of Montastraea annularis annual growth bands

Stable oxygen isotope ratios (1)180) of coral skeletons are influenced by ambient water temperature and by the oxygen isotope ratio in the surrounding sea water, which, in turn, is linked to evaporation (salinity) and precipitation. To investigate this relationship more thoroughly, we collected hourly temperature data from the Hen and Chickens Reef in the Florida Keys between 1975 and 1988 and com
Authors
Robert B. Halley, Peter K. Swart, Richard E. Dodge, J. Harold Hudson

Vertical structure of mean cross-shore currents across a barred surf zone

Mean cross-shore currents observed across a barred surf zone are compared to model predictions. The model is based on a simplified momentum balance with a turbulent boundary layer at the bed. Turbulent exchange is parameterized by an eddy viscosity formulation, with the eddy viscosity Aυ independent of time and the vertical coordinate. Mean currents result from gradients due to wave breaking and s
Authors
John W. Haines, Asbury H. Sallenger

Deep structure beneath Lake Ontario: Crustal-scale Grenville subdivisions

Lake Ontario marine seismic data reveal major Grenville crustal subdivisions beneath central and southern Lake Ontario separated by interpreted shear zones that extend to the lower crust. A shear zone bounded transition between the Elzevir and Frontenac terranes exposed north of Lake Ontario is linked to a seismically defined shear zone beneath central Lake Ontario by prominent aeromagnetic and gr
Authors
D. A. Forsyth, B. Milkereit, Colin A. Zelt, D. J. White, R. M. Easton, Deborah R. Hutchinson

Large-scale deformation related to the collision of the Aleutian Arc with Kamchatka

The far western Aleutian Island Arc is actively colliding with Kamchatka. Westward motion of the Aleutian Arc is brought about by the tangential relative motion of the Pacific plate transferred to major, right-lateral shear zones north and south of the arc. Early geologic mapping of Cape Kamchatka (a promontory of Kamchatka along strike with the Aleutian Arc) revealed many similarities to the geol
Authors
Eric L. Geist, David W. Scholl

Seismic images of a tectonic subdivision of the Greenville Orogen beneath lakes Ontario and Erie

New seismic data from marine air-gun and Vibroseis profiles in Lake Ontario and Lake Erie provide images of subhorizontal Phanerozoic sediments underlain by a remarkable series of easterly dipping reflections that extends from the crystalline basement to the lower crust. These reflections are interpreted as structural features of crustal-scale subdivisions within the Grenville Orogen. Broadly defo
Authors
D. A. Forsyth, B. Milkereit, A. Davidson, S. Hanmer, Deborah R. Hutchinson, W. J. Hinze, R.F. Mereu

Lake Michigan's late Quaternary limnological and climate history from ostracode, oxygen isotope, and magnetic susceptibility

The limnology of Lake Michigan has changed dramatically since the late Pleistocene in response to the expansion and contraction of continental glaciers, to differential isostatic rebound, and to climate change. The lake sediment's stratigraphic trends, magnetic susceptibility, δ18O, and ostracode species abundance ratios provide criteria to identify the lake's response to glacial ice and to differ
Authors
Richard M. Forester, Steven M. Colman, Richard L. Reynolds, Loyd D. Keigwin

Convective heat discharge of Wood River group of springs in the vicinity of Crater Lake, Oregon

Data sets for spring and stream chemistry are combined to estimate convective heat discharge and discharge anomalous amounts of sodium and chloride for the Wood River group of springs south of Crater Lake. The best estimate of heat discharge is 87 MWt based on chloride inventory; this value is 3-5 times the heat input to Crater Lake itself. Anomalous discharges of sodium and chloride are also larg
Authors
Manuel Nathenson, Robert H. Mariner, J. Michael Thompson