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At least 793 records · Page 44Linked to original sources
USGS1905

Economic geology of the Bingham mining district, Utah

The field work of which this report represents the final results was first undertaken in the summer of the year 1900. This district had long been selected by the writer as worthy of special economic investigation, as well on account of the importance of its products as because of its geological structure and the peculiar relations of its ore deposits. It was not, however, until the summer mentioned above that the means at the disposal of the Survey, both pecuniary and scientific, justified its undertaking. As originally planned, the areal or surface geology was to have been worked out by Mr. Keith, who had already spent many years in unraveling the complicated geological structure of the Appalachian province, while Mr. Boutwell, who had more recently become attached to the Survey, was to have charge of the underground geology, or a study of the ore deposits, under the immediate supervision of the writer. When the time came for actually taking the field, it was found that the pressure of other work would not permit Mr. Keith to carry out fully the part allotted to him, and in consequence a part of his field work has fallen to Mr. Boutwell. Field work was commenced by the writer and Mr. Boutwell early in July, 1900. Mr. Keith joined the party on August 10, but was obliged to leave for other duties early in September. Mr. Boutwell carried on his field work continuously from July until December, taking up underground work after the snowfall had rendered work on the surface geology impracticable. The geological structure had proved to be unexpectedly intricate and complicated, so that, on the opening of the field season of 1901, it was found necessary to make further study in the light of results already worked out, and Mr. Boutwell spent some weeks in the district in the early summer of 1901. His field work that year, partly in California and partly in Arizona, as assistant to Mr. Waldemar Lindgren, lasted through the summer and winter and well into the spring of 1902, so that but little time , was left before he was obliged to take the field again in his study of the Park City district of Utah. Mr. Keith had been too closely occupied with his Appalachian work to complete his part,' and thus the publication of this report has been unusually delayed. While the delay is a cause for regret, this regret is much tempered by the consideration that had the report been published earlier many facts brought to light during the vigorous development of the region in late years, which have an important bearing upon the structure and genesis of the ore deposits, could not have been used in its preparation.

Utah↗
USGS1963

Ground water in the Raft River Basin, Idaho, with special reference to irrigation use, 1956-60

In the Raft River basin in south-central Idaho, ground-water withdrawals for irrigation have more than doubled since 1955, when data were compiled for a comprehensive report on the area. The present report summerizes data on the ground-water use and changes in the water regimen during the intervening 5 years. Water levels have declined 10 to 20 feet in the areas of heaviest pumping and 3 to 5 feet throughout the remainder of the area. These water-level declines are related to increased ground-water pumpage and below-normal precipitation in the basin. The total pumpage during the 1960 irrigation season is estimated to be about 127,000 acre-feet, of which about half was consumed by crops or evaporated. The remainder returned to the aquifer. Irrigation development is acting to reduce the amount of underflow out of the basin. The water table can be lowered considerably more before underflow from the basin would be reduced substantially.

Idaho↗
USGS2004

Content Metadata Standards for Marine Science: A Case Study

The U.S. Geological Survey developed a content metadata standard to meet the demands of organizing electronic resources in the marine sciences for a broad, heterogeneous audience. These metadata standards are used by the Marine Realms Information Bank project, a Web-based public distributed library of marine science from academic institutions and government agencies. The development and deployment of this metadata standard serve as a model, complete with lessons about mistakes, for the creation of similarly specialized metadata standards for digital libraries.

Open-File Report↗
USGS1922

Stream measurement work: Chapter 9 in Thirteenth biennial report of the State Engineer to the governor of Utah: 1921-1922

Systematic stream measurement work was probably first undertaken in Utah when the United States Geological Survey in 1888 began collecting records of flow of certain streams in the West in connection with special studies relating to irrigation in the arid sections. Since 1895 Congress has made small appropriations “for gaging the streams and determining the water supply of the United States.” These appropriations have permitted of federal allotments in each State only sufficient to carry on a limited amount of investigation and in recent years many private and State organizations have co-operated wither by furnishing data or by making appropriations to assist in collecting data. This co-operation has more than doubled the extent of the work carried out by the Surface Water division of the Geological Survey.

Utah↗
USGS2012

Water-level data for the Albuquerque Basin and adjacent areas, central New Mexico, period of record through September 30, 2011

The Albuquerque Basin, located in central New Mexico, is about 100 miles long and 25–40 miles wide. The basin is defined as the extent of consolidated and unconsolidated deposits of Tertiary and Quaternary age that encompasses the structural Rio Grande Rift within the basin. Drinking-water supplies throughout the basin were obtained solely from groundwater resources until December 2008, when surface water from the Rio Grande began being treated and integrated into the system. An increase of about 20 percent in the basin human population from 1990 to 2000 and of about 22 percent increase from 2000 to 2010 also resulted in an increased demand for water. A network of wells was established by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the City of Albuquerque from April 1982 through September 1983 to monitor changes in groundwater levels throughout the basin. This network consisted of 6 wells with analog-to-digital recorders and 27 wells where water levels were measured monthly in 1983. Currently (2011), the network consists of 126 wells and piezometers (a piezometer is a specialized well open to a specific depth in the aquifer and is often of small diameter and nested with other piezometers open to different depths). This report presents water-level data collected by U.S. Geological Survey personnel at those 126 sites through water year 2011 to better help the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority manage water use.

New Mexico↗
USGS1983

Memorial to a Black Turnstone: An examplar of breeding and wintering site fidelity

Most of us who have banded long-distance migrants are aware, through recaptures of individuals, of the high degree of site fidelity exhibited by many bird species. It is not uncommon for a bander to have a marked bird remain in the vicinity of its banding site throughout a season and then to recapture or sight the bird there during the following season, or occasionally for several successive seasons. However, these "special" birds are rarely encountered away from the banding site and, if they are, it is usually because they have died and the band has been reported. Rarely do we get multiple recaptures or resightings of an individual bird that allow us to compare site fidelity at the two ends of its migration route or to determine the timing of movements between these points. Here we describe an instance of a uniquely marked Black Turnstone ( Arenario melanocephola) that was studied on both its breeding and wintering grounds for 5 consecutive years. We believe this represents one of the most detailed accounts of this nature for a North American bird.

North American Bird Bander↗
USGS1919

Fortieth annual report of the Director of the United States Geological Survey

The fortieth annual report of the United States Geological Survey is an appropriate place in which to compare the present scope of the work with that of the work done during the first year of this organization. The growth of the Survey is suggested by a comparison of the appropriations for 1918-19, which comprise items amounting to $1,437,745, with the total appropriation of $106,000 for the first year, 1879-80. During the 40 years the personnel has been increased from 39 to 967. The corresponding growth in public functions of the organization, which is one of the oldest of the Federal scientific bureaus, can be inferred from the detailed report of activities which makes up the greater part of this volume. The past year has been the most notable in the Survey's history, as it marked the completion of the period of its largest national contribution, and the later half of the year was largely a time of readjustment of program. It seems opportune, therefore, that the special topics discussed in the pages immediately following should be forward-looking and suggestive of the larger usefulness planned for the Geological Survey in the future.

Annual Report↗
USGS1905

Preliminary report on the geology and underground water resources of the central Great Plains

The area to which this report relates is shown in Pl. II. It comprises the greater portions of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, and the eastern portions of Colorado and of Wyoming, an area of about one-half million square miles. It is the result of my investigations during the past eight years, but includes also all available data from many sources. I have been aided by various field assistants, those deserving special mention being Messrs. C. A. Fisher, C. C. O'Harra, J.E. Todd, the late C. M. Hall, G. B. Eichardson, W. S. Tangier Smith, E. H. Barbour, and the late J. E. Macfarland. On account of its size, the region presents relatively diverse geologic conditions, but comprises comparatively few formations, most of which are widespread. The question of water supply, both overground and underground, is one of great interest to the people in this district, and although considerable progress has been made in some sections in developing well waters, there are vast areas in which the present supplies are inadequate, even for local domestic use. In order to understand the relations of the underground waters it has been necessary to investigate the geology, especially the structure and stratigraphy of the water-bearing and associated formations. This part of the work has required a very large amount of special field study, and the present results show that extended investigation will be required before many important questions of geology can be fully understood.

Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming↗
USGS2004

A theory for modeling ground-water flow in heterogeneous media

Construction of a ground-water model for a field area is not a straightforward process. Data are virtually never complete or detailed enough to allow substitution into the model equations and direct computation of the results of interest. Formal model calibration through optimization, statistical, and geostatistical methods is being applied to an increasing extent to deal with this problem and provide for quantitative evaluation and uncertainty analysis of the model. However, these approaches are hampered by two pervasive problems: 1) nonlinearity of the solution of the model equations with respect to some of the model (or hydrogeologic) input variables (termed in this report system characteristics) and 2) detailed and generally unknown spatial variability (heterogeneity) of some of the system characteristics such as log hydraulic conductivity, specific storage, recharge and discharge, and boundary conditions. A theory is developed in this report to address these problems. The theory allows construction and analysis of a ground-water model of flow (and, by extension, transport) in heterogeneous media using a small number of lumped or smoothed system characteristics (termed parameters). The theory fully addresses both nonlinearity and heterogeneity in such a way that the parameters are not assumed to be effective values. The ground-water flow system is assumed to be adequately characterized by a set of spatially and temporally distributed discrete values, ?, of the system characteristics. This set contains both small-scale variability that cannot be described in a model and large-scale variability that can. The spatial and temporal variability in ? are accounted for by imagining ? to be generated by a stochastic process wherein ? is normally distributed, although normality is not essential. Because ? has too large a dimension to be estimated using the data normally available, for modeling purposes ? is replaced by a smoothed or lumped approximation y?. (where y is a spatial and temporal interpolation matrix). Set y?. has the same form as the expected value of ?, y 'line' ? , where 'line' ? is the set of drift parameters of the stochastic process; ?. is a best-fit vector to ?. A model function f(?), such as a computed hydraulic head or flux, is assumed to accurately represent an actual field quantity, but the same function written using y?., f(y?.), contains error from lumping or smoothing of ? using y?.. Thus, the replacement of ? by y?. yields nonzero mean model errors of the form E(f(?)-f(y?.)) throughout the model and covariances between model errors at points throughout the model. These nonzero means and covariances are evaluated through third and fifth-order accuracy, respectively, using Taylor series expansions. They can have a significant effect on construction and interpretation of a model that is calibrated by estimating ?.. Vector ?.. is estimated as 'hat' ? using weighted nonlinear least squares techniques to fit a set of model functions f(y'hat' ?) to a. corresponding set of observations of f(?), Y. These observations are assumed to be corrupted by zero-mean, normally distributed observation errors, although, as for ?, normality is not essential. An analytical approximation of the nonlinear least squares solution is obtained using Taylor series expansions and perturbation techniques that assume model and observation errors to be small. This solution is used to evaluate biases and other results to second-order accuracy in the errors. The correct weight matrix to use in the analysis is shown to be the inverse of the second-moment matrix E(Y-f(y?.))(Y-f(y?.))', but the weight matrix is assumed to be arbitrary in most developments. The best diagonal approximation is the inverse of the matrix of diagonal elements of E(Y-f(y?.))(Y-f(y?.))', and a method of estimating this diagonal matrix when it is unknown is developed using a special objective function to compute 'hat' ?. When considered to be an estimate of f

Professional Paper↗
USGS1997

Looking for an old aerial photograph

Attempts to photograph the surface of the Earth date from the 1800's, when photographers attached cameras to balloons, kites, and even pigeons. Today, aerial photographs and satellite images are commonplace. The rate of acquiring aerial photographs and satellite images has increased rapidly in recent years. Views of the Earth obtained from aircraft or satellites have become valuable tools to Government resource planners and managers, land-use experts, environmentalists, engineers, scientists, and a wide variety of other users. Many people want historical aerial photographs for business or personal reasons. They may want to locate the boundaries of an old farm or a piece of family property. Or they may want a photograph as a record of changes in their neighborhood, or as a gift. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) maintains the Earth Science Information Centers (ESIC?s) to sell aerial photographs, remotely sensed images from satellites, a wide array of digital geographic and cartographic data, as well as the Bureau?s wellknown maps. Declassified photographs from early spy satellites were recently added to the ESIC offerings of historical images. Using the Aerial Photography Summary Record System database, ESIC researchers can help customers find imagery in the collections of other Federal agencies and, in some cases, those of private companies that specialize in esoteric products.

Fact Sheet↗