Publications
These publications showcase the significant science conducted in our Science Centers.
Filter Total Items: 16784
The role of efflorescent sulfate salts in Indiana’s mine water quality
Efflorescent sulfate salts (ESS), which form from evaporating acid mine drainage and occur in a wide variety of environments, can significantly alter water quality and are, therefore, important considerations for remediation strategies at coal refuse sites. Many ESS, including melanterite, rozenite, siderotil, copiapite, halotrichite, coquimbite, epsomite, potash alum, and gypsum, are known to occ
Authors
Jeane Pope, E.R. Bayless, G. Olyphant, T. Branam
Wildlife toxicology: environmental contaminants and their national and international regulation
No abstract available.
Authors
K. Christiana Grim, Anne Fairbrother, Barnett A. Rattner
Can arsenic occurrence rate in bedrock aquifers be predicted?
A high percentage (31%) of groundwater samples from bedrock aquifers in the greater Augusta area, Maine was found to contain greater than 10 μg L–1 of arsenic. Elevated arsenic concentrations are associated with bedrock geology, and more frequently observed in samples with high pH, low dissolved oxygen, and low nitrate. These associations were quantitatively compared by statistical analysis. Stepw
Authors
Qiang Yang, Hun Bok Jung, Robert G. Marvinney, Charles W. Culbertson, Yan Zheng
The Middle Ordovician Knox unconformity in the Black Warrior Basin
Analysis of well core and cuttings from the Black Warrior Basin in Mississippi reveals the presence of a Middle Ordovician (Whiterockian) erosional unconformity interpreted to be equivalent to the well-known Knox-Beekmantown unconformity in eastern North America. The unconformity occurs at the top of a peritidal dolostone unit known informally as the upper dolostone, whose stratigraphic placement
Authors
Gary S. Dwyer, John E. Repetski
Ordovician of the Sauk megasequence in the Ozark region of northern Arkansas and parts of Missouri and adjacent states
Exposures of Ordovician rocks of the Sauk megasequence in Missouri and northern Arkansas comprise Ibexian and lower Whiterockian carbonates with interspersed sandstones. Subjacent Cambrian strata are exposed in Missouri but confined to the subsurface in Arkansas. The Sauk-Tippecanoe boundary in this region is at the base of the St. Peter Sandstone. Ulrich and associates divided the Arkansas sectio
Authors
Raymond L. Ethington, John E. Repetski, James R. Derby
Mineral resource of the month: cadmium
The element cadmium was discovered in 1817 by Friedrich Stromeyer, a professor of chemistry at the University of Göttingen in Germany. Stromeyer noticed that a yellowish glow would occur when heat was applied to certain samples of calamine, a zinc-carbonate. This was unusual as the reaction was expected to be colorless. After further testing, Stromeyer deduced that an unknown metallic impurity in
Authors
Amy C. Tolcin
Mineral resource of the month: manganese
Manganese is a silver-colored metal resembling iron and often found in conjunction with iron. The earliest-known human use of manganese compounds was in the Stone Age, when early humans used manganese dioxide as pigments in cave paintings. In ancient Rome and Egypt, people started using it to color or remove the color from glass - a practice that continued to modern times. Today, manganese is pred
Authors
Lisa A. Corathers
Mineral resource of the month: aggregates
Crushed stone and construction sand and gravel, the two major types of natural aggregates, are among the most abundant and accessible natural resources on the planet. The earliest civilizations used aggregates for various purposes, mainly construction. Today aggregates provide the basic raw materials for the foundation of modern society.
Authors
Jason C. Willett
Mineral resource of the month: magnesium
Magnesium is the eighthmost abundant element in Earth’s crust, and the second-most abundant metal ion in seawater. Although magnesium is found in more than 60 minerals, only brucite, dolomite, magnesite and carnallite are commercially important for their magnesium content. Magnesium and its compounds also are recovered from seawater, brines found in lakes and wells, and bitterns (salts).
Authors
Deborah A. Kramer
Large submarine sand waves and gravel lag substrates on Georges Bank off Atlantic Canada
Georges Bank is a large, shallow, continental shelf feature offshore of New England and Atlantic Canada. The bank is mantled with a veneer of glacial debris transported during the late Pleistocene from continental areas lying to the north. These sediments were reworked by marine processes during postglacial sea-level transgression and continue to be modified by the modern oceanic regime. The surfi
Authors
B.J. Todd, Page C. Valentine
Mineral resource of the month: hydraulic cement
Hydraulic cements are the binders in concrete and most mortars and stuccos. Concrete, particularly the reinforced variety, is the most versatile of all construction materials, and most of the hydraulic cement produced worldwide is portland cement or similar cements that have portland cement as a basis, such as blended cements and masonry cements. Cement typically makes up less than 15 percent of t
Authors
Hendrik G. van Oss
Climate variability during the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age based on ostracod faunas and shell geochemistry from Biscayne Bay, Florida
An 800-year-long environmental history of Biscayne Bay, Florida, is reconstructed from ostracod faunal and shell geochemical (oxygen, carbon isotopes, Mg/Ca ratios) studies of sediment cores from three mudbanks in the central and southern parts of the bay. Using calibrations derived from analyses of modern Biscayne and Florida Bay ostracods, palaeosalinity oscillations associated with changes in p
Authors
Thomas M. Cronin, G. Lynn Wingard, Gary S. Dwyer, Peter K. Swart, Debra A. Willard, Jessica Albietz