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Search indexed USGS publications on groundwater, aquifers, geologic maps, mineral resources and earthquakes. Explore source records by subject and place.

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At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
USGS1992

The geology of radon

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General Interest Publication↗
USGS1983

Glaciers: clues to future climate?

A glacier is a large mass of ice having its genesis on land and represents a multiyear surplus of snowfall over snowmelt. At the present time, perennial ice covers about 10 percent of the land areas of the Earth. Although glaciers are generally thought of as polar entities, they also are found in mountainous areas throughout the world, on all continents except Australia, and even at or near the Equator on high mountains in Africa and South America.

General Interest Publication↗
USGS1998

Gold

Through the ages, men and women have cherished gold, and many have had a compelling desire to amass great quantities of it -- so compelling a desire, in fact, that the frantic need to seek and hoard gold has been aptly named "gold fever." Gold was among the first metals to be mined because it commonly occurs in its native form -- that is, not combined with other elements -- because it is beautiful and imperishable, and because exquisite objects can be made from it.

General Interest Publication↗
USGS1992

The Great Ice Age

The Great Ice Age, a recent chapter in the Earth's history, was a period of recurring widespread glaciations. During the Pleistocene Epoch of the geologic time scale, which began about a million or more years ago, mountain glaciers formed on all continents, the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland were more extensive and thicker than today, and vast glaciers, in places as much as several thousand feet thick, spread across northern North America and Eurasia. So extensive were these glaciers that almost a third of the present land surface of the Earth was intermittently covered by ice. Even today remnants of the great glaciers cover almost a tenth of the land, indicating that conditions somewhat similar to those which produced the Great Ice Age are still operating in polar and subpolar climates.

General Interest Publication↗
USGS1975

The interior of the earth

The center of the Earth lies nearly 4,000 miles beneath our feet. At present the nature of the Earth's interior is known only from indirect evidence collected from studies of rocks and minerals, seismic waves, heat flow from the interior, and the Earth's gravity and magnetic field and through comparisons of the Earth with other planets, with meteorites, and with the Sun and other stars.

General Interest Publication↗
USGS2000

The mountain that moved: geologic wonders of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests

Prehistoric, giant landslides in Montgomery and Craig Counties, Va., in the Blacksburg/Wythe Ranger Districts of the Jefferson National Forest, are the largest known landslides in eastern North America and are among the largest in the world. One of the landslides is more than 3 miles long! The ancient, giant landslides extend for more than 20 miles along the eastern slope of Sinking Creek Mountain. Enormous slabs of rock ranging from about 0.2 to more than 1.5 square miles in size broke loose and slid downslope under the influence of gravity. The movement of some slides may have been slow, but the movement of others was probably sudden and catastrophic.

Virginia↗
USGS2001

Natural gemstones

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General Interest Publication↗
USGS1993

The San Andreas Fault

The presence of the San Andreas fault was brought dramatically to world attention on April 18, 1906, when sudden displacement along the fault produced the great San Francisco earthquake and fire. This earthquake, however, was but one of many that have resulted from episodic displacement along the fault throughout its life of about 15-20 million years.

California↗
USGS1998

Volcanoes

Volcanoes destroy and volcanoes create. The catastrophic eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, made clear the awesome destructive power of a volcano. Yet, over a time span longer than human memory and record, volcanoes have played a key role in forming and modifying the planet upon which we live. More than 80 percent of the Earth's surface--above and below sea level--is of volcanic origin. Gaseous emissions from volcanic vents over hundreds of millions of years formed the Earth's earliest oceans and atmosphere, which supplied the ingredients vital to evolve and sustain life. Over geologic eons, countless volcanic eruptions have produced mountains, plateaus, and plains, which subsequent erosion and weathering have sculpted into majestic landscapes and formed fertile soils.

General Interest Publication↗
USGS1990

Collecting rocks

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General Interest Publication↗
USGS1981

Plain geology

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General Interest Publication↗