Geology topics

Emily Taylor

Publications and source records attributed to Emily Taylor.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2017

Adding a nitrogen footprint to Colorado State University’s sustainability plan

As a large land grant university with more than 32,000 students, Colorado State University has both on-campus non-agricultural and agricultural sources of nitrogen (N) released to the environment. We used the Nitrogen Footprint Tool to estimate the amount of N released from different sectors of the university for the CSU 2014 academic year. The largest on campus sources were food production, utilities (heating, cooling, electricity), and research animals. The total on-campus N footprint in 2014 was 287 metric tons. This value was equivalent to the nitrogen footprint of agricultural experiment stations and other agricultural facilities, whose nitrogen footprint was 273 metric tons. CSU has opportunities to reduce its on-campus footprint through educational programs promoting low-meat diets and commuting by bicycle or bus. There is also an opportunity to advance ideas of agricultural best management practices, including precision farming and better livestock management. This article describes the planned and ongoing efforts to educate CSU about how societal activities release nitrogen to the environment, contributing to global change. It offers personal and institutional options for taking action, which would ultimately reduce CSU’s excess reactive nitrogen loss to the environment. The N-footprint for CSU, including scenarios of possible future nitrogen reductions, is also discussed.

Sustainability↗

USGS2003

Stratigraphic inferences derived from borehole data of Tertiary basin-filling rocks of the Pahrump Valley basin, Nevada and California

This report summarizes the results from the compilation and interpretation of lithologic information from 266 driller?s logs from the Pahrump Valley, NV-CA. Borehole records for the Pahrump Valley were selected from a total of several thousand available well logs as those having lithologic data and high confidence in the well locations. Driller?s descriptions were reduced into one of 14 lithologic categories to produce a set of subsurface data that were internally consistent and amenable to contouring. Using the lithologic descriptors, the aggregate thickness of general lithologic types (coarse grained material, fine grained material, limestone, and volcanic material) were computed for each borehole. These data were used to compute ratios such as percent coarse-grained component of sedimentary rocks penetrated in each borehole that could be contoured.

Open-File Report↗

USGS2001

Facies analysis of Tertiary basin-filling rocks of the Death Valley regional ground-water system and surrounding areas, Nevada and California

Existing hydrologic models of the Death Valley region typically have defined the Cenozoic basins as those areas that are covered by recent surficial deposits, and have treated the basin-fill deposits that are concealed under alluvium as a single unit with uniform hydrologic properties throughout the region, and with depth. Although this latter generalization was known to be flawed, it evidently was made because available geologic syntheses did not provide the basis for a more detailed characterization. As an initial attempt to address this problem, this report presents a compilation and synthesis of existing and new surface and subsurface data on the lithologic variations between and within the Cenozoic basin fills of this region. The most permeable lithologies in the Cenozoic basin fills are freshwater limestones, unaltered densely welded tuffs, and little-consolidated coarse alluvium. The least permeable lithologies are playa claystones, altered nonwelded tuffs, and tuffaceous and clay-matrix sediments of several types. In all but the youngest of the basin fills, permeability probably decreases strongly with depth owing to a typically increasing abundance of volcanic ash or clay in the matrices of the clastic sediments with increasing age (and therefore with increasing depth in general), and to increasing consolidation and alteration (both hydrothermal and diagenetic) with increasing depth and age. This report concludes with a categorization of the Cenozoic basins of the Death Valley region according to the predominant lithologies in the different basin fills and presents qualitative constraints on the hydrologic properties of these major lithologic categories.

Open-File Report↗