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Considerable progress has been made in the Worldwide Earthquake Risk Management (WWERM) Program since its initiation in late 1989 as a cooperative program of the Agency for International Development (AID), Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), and the U.S. Geological Survey. Probabilistic peak acceleration and peak Modified Mercalli intensity...

UPWELLING of nutrient-rich Pacific deep water along the North American west coast is ultimately driven by the temperature difference between air masses over land and over the ocean. The intensity of upwelling, and biological production in the region, could therefore be affected by anthropogenic climate change. Examination of the geological...

Forecasting of one-dimensional time series previously has been used to help distinguish periodicity, chaos, and noise. This paper presents two-dimensional generalizations for making such distinctions for spatial patterns. The techniques are evaluated using synthetic spatial patterns and then are applied to a natural example: ripples formed in sand by blowing...

Samples from two peat-forming environments of Holocene and Miocene age in Kalimantan (Borneo), Indonesia, were studied petrographically using nearly identical sample preparation and microscopic methodologies. Both deposits consist of two basic types of organic material: plant organs/tissues and fine-grained matrix. There are seven predominant types of plant organs and tissues:...

Five models for near-surface crustal stresses induced by gravity and horizontal deformation and the influence of rock property contrasts, rock strength, and stress relaxation on these stresses are presented. Three of the models-the lateral constraint model, the model for crustal stresses caused by horizontal deformation, and the model for the...

Horizontal and vertical thermal maturity patterns and time-temperature modeling of Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks in the San Juan Basin of southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico indicate that the high levels of thermal maturity in the northern part of the basin are due...

The Gibbs energies of mixing for NaCl-KCl binary solids and liquids and solid-saturated NaCl-KCl-H2O ternary liquids were modeled using asymmetric Margules treatments. The coefficients of the expressions were calibrated using an extensive array of binary solvus and solidus data, and both binary and ternary liquidus data. Over the PTX range considered, the...

Parameter estimation and contaminant source characterization are key steps in the development of a coupled groundwater flow and contaminant transport simulation model. Here a methodologyfor simultaneous model parameter estimation and source characterization is presented. The parameter estimation/source characterization inverse model combines groundwater flow and contaminant transport simulation with non-linear maximum...

The objective of this paper is to present analyses of a set of acceleration response records obtained during the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (Ms = 7.1) from the 30-story, three-winged, ductile moment-resistant reinforced-concrete-framed Pacific Park Plaza Building, located in Emeryville, east of San Francisco, Calif. The building was...

Elevated concentrations (0.6-0.9 mg/l) of selenium were detected in the groundwater of a small backfill area at a surface mine in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming. This report focuses on the source of selenium, its modes of occurrence in overburden deposits and backfill groundwater, and its fate. The immediate source...

This paper describes a numerical study of an elastic sphere moving down an incline with a string of identical spheres placed equally apart. Two momentum equations and a moment equation formulated for the moving sphere are solved numerically for the instantaneous velocity of the moving sphere on an incline with...

More objective and consistent methods are needed to assess water quality for large areas. A spatial model, one that capitalizes on the topologic relationships among spatial entities, to aggregate pollution sources from upstream drainage areas is described that can be implemented on land surfaces having heterogeneous water-pollution effects. An infrastructure...

No abstract available. ...

Piezometer nests were installed at study sites in each of five north-south-trending end moraines of the late Pleistocene Oak Creek Formation in southeastern Wisconsin. The formation is composed primarily of a fine-grained glacial diamicton (till) and laterally continuous and discontinuous, coarse-grained lake and meltwater stream sediment. It overlies the Silurian...

The relative concentrations of Cl, Br, I, and K in fluid inclusions in hydrothermal minerals were measured by laser microprobe noble gas mass spectrometry on irradiated samples containing 10−10 to 10−8 L of fluid. Distinctive halogen signatures indicate contrasting sources of fluid salinity in fluid inclusions from representative “magmatic” (St....

Argon, krypton, chlorine, bromine, and iodine were measured in a homogeneous population of high-salinity hydrothermal fluid inclusions from the Tertiary-age Mississippi Valley-type (MVT) lead-fluorite-barite deposits at Hansonburg, New Mexico to establish new types of evidence for the history of both the fluid and the major dissolved salts. Noble gases and...

The hydrologic and solute budgets of a lake can be strongly influenced by transient groundwater flow. Several shallow interdunal lakes in southwest Spain are in close hydraulic connection with the shallow ground water. Two permanent lakes and one intermittent lake have chloride concentrations that differ by almost an order of...

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a correlation between measurements of organic matter (OM) maturity and laboratory measurements of visible and near-infrared spectral reflectance, and if Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images could be used to map maturity. The maturity of Mississippian Chainman Shale samples collected...

The Pacific greater white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons) population has declined precipitously over the past 20 years. Loss of wetland habitat in California wintering areas has had a significant effect on the population, so recovery of the population may depend on innovative management of the few remaining wetlands. A computer simulation...

Before urban development, most ground-water recharge on Long Island, New York, occurred during the dormant season, when evapotranspiration is low. The use of recharge basins for collection and disposal of urban storm runoff in Nassau County has enabled ground-water recharge to occur also during the...

Shock waves generated by the space shuttles Columbia (August 13, 1989), Atlantis (April 11, 1991) and Discovery (September 18, 1991) on their return to Edwards Air Force Base, California, were recorded by TERRAscope (Caltech's broadband seismic network), the Caltech-U.S.G.S Southern California Seismic Network (SCSN), and the University of Southern California...

Crude oils from Iraq and California have been pyrolyzed under hydrous conditions at 200 and 300°C for time periods up to 210 days, in gold-plated reactors. Elemental (vanadium, nickel), stable isotopic (carbon), and molecular (n-alkanes, acyclic isoprenoids, steranes, terpanes and aromatic steroid hydrocarbons) analyses were made on the original and...

The lavas of the 1955 east rift eruption of Kilauea Volcano have been the object of considerable petrologic interest for two reasons. First, the early 1955 lavas are among the most differentiated ever erupted at Kilauea, and second, the petrographic character and chemical composition of the lava being erupted changed...

The Cordilleran orogen in south-eastern Alaska includes 14 distinct metamorphic belts that make up three major metamorphic complexes, from east to west: the Coast plutonic–metamorphic complex in the Coast Mountains; the Glacier Bay–Chichagof plutonic–metamorphic complex in the central part of the Alexander Archipelago; and the Chugach plutonic–metamorphic complex in the...

Hundreds of kilometres of West Tennessee streams have been channelized since the turn of the century. After a stream is straightened, dredged, or cleared, basinwide ecologic, hydrologic, and geomorphic processes bring about an integrated, characteristic recovery sequence. The rapid pace of channel responses to channelization provides an opportunity to document...