Publications

Each chapter of the 2015 edition of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Mineral Commodity Summaries (MCS) includes information on events, trends, and issues for each mineral commodity as well as discussions and tabular presentations on domestic industry structure, Government programs, tariffs, 5-year salient statistics, and world production and resources. The MCS is the earliest comprehensive source

The U.S. Geological Survey mapped approximately 336 square kilometers of the lower shoreface and inner continental shelf offshore of Fire Island, New York, in 1996 and 1997, using high-resolution sidescan-sonar and seismic-reflection systems, and again in 2011, using interferometric sonar and high-resolution chirp seismic-reflection systems. This report presents a comparison of sediment thickness

The management and availability of Indiana’s water resources increase in importance every year. Specifically, information on low-flow characteristics of streams is essential to State water-management agencies. These agencies need low-flow information when working with issues related to irrigation, municipal and industrial water supplies, fish and wildlife protection, and the dilution of waste. Ind

Background Identifying movement routes and stopover sites is necessary for developing effective management and conservation strategies for migratory animals. In the case of migratory birds, a collection of migration routes, known as a flyway, is often hundreds to thousands of kilometers long and can extend across political boundaries. Flyways encompass the entire geographic range between the breed

An early to middle Pleistocene ostracode fauna was discovered in sediment core P1-93-AR-23 (P23, 76.95°N, 155.07°W) from 951 meter water depth from the Northwind Ridge, western Arctic Ocean. Piston core P23 yielded more than 30,000 specimens and a total of about 30 species. Several early to mid-Pleistocene species in the genera Krithe,Echinocythereis, Pterygocythereis, and Arcacythere are now exti

Modeling population dynamics while accounting for imperfect detection is essential to monitoring programs. Distance sampling allows estimating population size while accounting for imperfect detection, but existing methods do not allow for direct estimation of demographic parameters. We develop a model that uses temporal correlation in abundance arising from underlying population dynamics to estima

Antimony is a lustrous silvery-white semimetal or metalloid. Archaeological and historical studies indicate that antimony and its mineral sulfides have been used by humans for at least six millennia. The alchemist Basil Valentine is sometimes credited with “discovering” the element; he described the extraction of metallic antimony from stibnite in his treatise “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony,”

This report presents updates to methods, describes additional data collected, documents modeling results, and discusses implications from an updated habitat-flow model that can be used to predict ecological habitat for fish and recreational habitat for canoeing on the main stem Shenandoah River in Virginia. Given a 76-percent increase in population predictions for 2040 over 1995 records, increased

Atlantic Sturgeon Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus was federally listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act as five distinct population segments (DPS). Currently, at least 18 estuaries coastwide host spawning populations and the viability of these vary, requiring differing levels of protection. Subadults emigrate from their natal estuaries to marine waters where they are vulnerable to bycatch; on

Karst aquifers are productive groundwater systems, supplying approximately 25 % of the world’s drinking water. Sustainable use of this critical water supply requires information about rates of recharge to karst aquifers. The overall goal of this project is to collect long-term, high-resolution hydrologic and geochemical datasets at James Cave, Virginia, to evaluate the quantity and quality of rech

The Chipuxet River and Chickasheen Brook Basins in southern Rhode Island are an important water resource for public and domestic supply, irrigation, recreation, and aquatic habitat. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Rhode Island Department of Health, began a study in 2012 as part of an effort to protect the source of water to six large-capacity production wells that supply drinki

A comparison study of selected static leaching and acid–base accounting (ABA) methods using a mineralogically diverse set of 12 modern-style, metal mine waste samples was undertaken to understand the relative performance of the various tests. To complement this study, in-depth mineralogical studies were conducted in order to elucidate the relationships between sample mineralogy, weathering feature