Introduction

This map was originally designed to illustrate the lithologic nature of the rocks in the Appalachian orogen and to be an underlay for the mineral deposits database for the Appalachians. Most of the geology was compiled by John Peper; M. Foose added some additional peripheral sections. The mineral deposits were compiled in the early 1980s by a group of economic geologists within the USGS Eastern Mineral Resources Branch. These geologists included deposits that were of significant size and economic importance, but also included small deposits which represented the metallogenic character of the Appalachians. The intent of this mineral deposit compilations was to reflect the Appalachian mineral endowment and metallogeny. The geologic and mineral deposit compilation was concluded in the early 1990s and was done using manual drafting and typewritten tables. Subsequently, the project languished until GIS technology enabled the results of this manual work to be directly brought into digital formats.

The files and folders are as follows:

Files:

peper.apr - The ArcView project file

peper.aep - ArcExplorer project

peper.axl - ArcExplorer 3.x (Java edition) project

readme.txt - Descriptive text file

Folders:

data - ArcView shapefiles (compressed, 10.5 MB)

age - geologic age of the units

lithology - lithology of the units

mineral_deposits - mineral deposits

normal_flts - normal faults for the southeast

states - states of the coverage area

thrust_flts - thrust faults for the southeast

docs - Metadata for data in this project

metadata.txt - metadata file for geographic files

references.doc - Microsoft Word document with list of sources for metal and related deposits

sources.txt - text file that contains sources used to compile the Appalachian map

e00 - Coverages that are in ARC export file format (.e00)

age.e00

lithology.e00

mineral_deposits.e00

normal_flts.e00

thrust_flts.e00

images

index_map.jpg - map of the United States showing the map coverage area

Posted online November 5, 2009
(available online only)
CD originally published in 2001