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Research about Massachusetts

Source-linked reports with geographic coverage including Massachusetts.

At least 757 records · Page 42Linked to original sources

Northern part, Ten Mile and Taunton River basins

The northern part of the Ten Mile and Taunton River basins is an area of about 195 square miles within Norfolk, Plymouth, and Bristol Counties in southeastern Massachusetts. The northern boundary of the area (plate 1) is the drainage divide separating these basins from that of the Charles, Neponset, and Weymouth River basins. The western boundary is, for the most part, the divide separating the basins from the Blackstone River basin. The eastern boundary is at the edge of the Brockton-Pembroke area (Petersen, 1962; Petersen and Shaw, 1961). The southern boundary in Seekonk is the northern limit of the East Providence quadrangle, for which a ground-water map was prepared by Allen and Gorman (1959); eastward, the southern boundaries of the city of Attleboro and the towns of Norton, Easton, and West Bridgewater form the southern boundary of the area. This report is one of two prepared by the Geological Survey for the Water Resources Commission. The principal purpose of this report is to make available the basic data on which the other, a map showing availability of ground water, is based. This basic-data report also can be used by engineers, planners, and others interested in or responsible for water-resources planning to determine the materials to be encountered (tables 3 and 4) and the yields which may be obtained from wells and test holes (tables 1 and 2) in the stratified sand and gravel that are the principal source of ground water and in bedrock. Partial and complete chemical analyses (tables 7 and 8) of these test holes and of some privately-owned wells provide information on the general quality of the water for domestic and other uses. A tabulation of existing municipal supplies, their capacity, production (table 5), and chemical quality of the water (table 6) may be used for regional planning purposes. Water-level measurements (figure 1) can be used to determine the annual fluctuations of the water table in certain types of materials. Seismic work (table 9) in the Canoe River valley, Norton, and test drilling with a power augur (tables 2 and 4) were done for the Geological Survey as part of the investigation.

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Eocene and miocene rocks off the northeastern coast of the United States

A grab sample from a depth of 1675 m at a point south of Cape Cod contains early Eocene planktonic Foraminifera and is correlated with the Globorotalia rex zone of Trinidad. The assemblage indicates a depth comparable to that existing today. Regional relations suggest that the Cretaceous and Eocene deposits deepen to the west toward New Jersey. Two mollusk-bearing blocks dredged from the northern side of Georges Bank are correlative with the Miocene Yorktown Formation. Rocks from two other stations are probably Miocene. Benthonic Foraminifera in one sample indicate deposition in cool temperate waters of less than 60 m depth.

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Records of wells and test holes, materials tests, and chemical analyses of water in the Assabet River basin, Massachusetts

The Assabet River, located in Worcester and Middlesex Counties in eastern Massachusetts, drains an area of approximately 177 square miles. The area includes all or a portion of the following towns: Acton, Boxborough, Carlisle, Concord, Hudson, Littleton, Marlborough, Maynard, Stow, Sudbury, and Westford in Middlesex County; Berlin, Bolton, Boylston, Clinton, Grafton, Harvard, Northborough, Shrewsbury, and Westborough in Worcester County (see plate 1 in pocket). This report presents data collected as part of an investigation of the ground-water resources in the Assabet River basin by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Massachusetts Water Resources Commission. The data have been prepared for release in order to make available to the public basic ground-water data that will be useful in the planning of water-resources development. The data in this report were collected intermittently from 1939 to 1964 by H. A. Wilde, H. L. Pree, H. N. Halberg, J. A. Baker, R. W. Macomber, W. B. Fleck, and S. J. Pollock. The selected data in tables 2, 3, 4, and 5 represent those wells, test wells, and borings that were deemed representative of any given location. Data of some one hundred wells and test wells and over one thousand bridge and roadway borings are not included in this report, but may be inspected at the U.S. Geological Survey, Ground Water Branch, 211 Congress Street, Boston, Massachusetts. Tables 6-9 include data on chemical analyses of water samples, physical and hydrologic properties of materials samples, and water-table measurements made during the years 1961 through 1964. The geologic units used in tables 2 and 3 are described in table 1.

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Boulder train of silicified paleozoic wood, southeastern Massachusetts

Pebbles of silicified gymnospermous wood occur widely in the drift of southeastern Massachusetts. An investigation of the distribution of these pebbles shows the bedrock source of the wood to be tuffaceous beds that apparently overlie older granite in the Middleboro-Plympton area, Massachusetts, and are at the base of the Carboniferous rocks of the Narragansett Basin. A second center of distribution of the wood may lie offshore, north of Cape Cod. It is estimated that many thousands of large logs were broken up and carried away from the outcrop by Pleistocene ice sheets in the production of the boulder train. © 1964, The Geological Society of America, Inc.

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