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Multiple generations of prehistoric sand blows, interpreted as earthquake induced, have been discovered throughout coastal South Carolina. These sand blows extend far beyond 1886 earthquake induced sand blows, in sediments having approximately the same liquefaction susceptibility. The seismic source zone for the prehistoric sand blows is unknown. The different distributions...

The U.S. Geological Survey is modeling hydraulic flow and thermal-energy transport at a two-well injection/ withdrawal system in St. Paul, Minnesota. The design of the finite-difference model grid for the doublet-well system is complicated because the aquifer is anisotropic and the principal axes of transmissivity are not aligned with the...

U–Pb isotopic analyses of cogenetic zircon suites revise the ages of two augen gneiss terranes in central and northern Idaho. The augen gneiss of Priest River yields an upper-intercept concordia age for only moderately discordant zircons of 1576 ± 13 Ma; there is no evidence of an inherited xenocrystic lead component. Because this...

The need by land managers and planners for more quantitative measures of mineral values has prompted scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey to test a probabilistic method of mineral resource assessment on a portion of the wilderness lands that have been studied by the Survey during the past 20 years....

The quality of surface water in Pike County, Kentucky, seems to reflect the composition of coals in the county. Groundwater acquires mineral concentration characteristics of the rocks through which it moves. When groundwater is discharged to streams the mineral concentrations in streams, especially during low flow periods, are characteristic of...

Olivine-liquid partition coefficients for Ni(DNi), calculated from Ni vs MgO abundance variations in komatiite series basalts, compare favourably with experimentally determined values, if Ni variations in olivine-controlled basalts can be modelled with an equation that assumes equilibrium between the entire olivine crystal and its coexisting liquid.-J.A.Z....

A mathematical theory and a corresponding algorithm have been developed to derive topographic maps from radar images as photometric arrays. Thus, as radargrammetry is to photogrammetry, so radarclinometry is to photoclinometry. Photoclinometry is endowed with a fundamental indeterminacy principle even for terrain homogeneous in normal albedo. This arises from the...

An estimate of the sliding velocity and basal meltwater discharge of the Puget lobe of the Cordilleran ice sheet can be calculated from its reconstructed extent, altitude, and mass balance. Lobe dimensions and surface altitudes are inferred from ice limits and flow-direction indicators. Net annual mass balance and total ablation...

Model estimations of the proportion of Cu in oxidized sediments associated with extractable organic materials show some agreement with the proportion of Cu extracted from those sediments with ammonium hydroxide. Data were from 17 estuaries of widely differing sediment chemistry. The modelling and extraction methods agreed best where concentrations of...

Pb, Sr, Nd, and Hf isotopic relationships among basalts from the Hawaiian Islands suggest that these basalts were derived from three sources; the oceanic lithosphere (Kea end member), the depleted asthenosphere (posterosional end member) and a deep-mantle plume (Koolau end member).Hawaiian tholeiites are derived within the lithosphere and the isotopic...

In the numerical modeling of groundwater solute transport, explicit solutions may be obtained for the concentration field at any future time without computing concentrations at intermediate times. The spatial variables are discretized and time is left continuous in the governing differential equation. These semianalytical solutions have been presented in the...

Stream channels in the Paria River basin were eroded and partially refilled between 1883 and 1980. Basin-wide erosion began in 1883; channels were fully entrenched and widened by 1890. This erosion occurred during the well-documented period of arroyo cutting in the Southwest. Photographs of the Paria River channel taken between...

A hand-operated, tubular-coring device developed for use in biogeochemical sampling of succulent and pulpy plants is described. The sampler weighs about 500 g (1.1 lb); and if 25 × 175 mm (1 × 7 in) screw-top test tubes are used as...

The San Francisco Bay estuary has been rapidly modified by human activity. Diking and filling of most of its wetlands have eliminated habitats for fish and waterfowl; the introduction of exotic species has transformed the composition of its aquatic communities; reduction of freshwater inflow by more than half has changed...

Harmonic decomposition is applied to the shallow water equations, thereby creating a system of equations for the amplitude of the various tidal constituents and for the residual motions. The resulting equations are elliptic in nature, are well posed and in practice are shown to be numerically well-behaved. There are a...

The question of adapting to radar images the existing hardware that form topographic maps through stereo-photogrammetric models, is examined in principle. Such hardware utilizes a human/computer hybrid. Although the problem of brightness differentials between corresponding landmarks can be dealt with pseudo-photoclinometrically, the main problem is whether the perspective in a...

Formation water from U.S. Gulf Coast geopressured-geothermal sandstone aquifers has been analyzed to determine the geochemistry of uranium in these systems. Results of chemical analyses and chemical equilibrium modeling indicate the formation waters are in equilibrium with uraninite (UO2) and coffinite (USiO4). The 234U238U">234U238U activity ratios...

The carbon isotope geochemistry of glasses from Loihi Seamount has been compared with that of MORB glasses. Stepped heating shows two carbon components in both sample suites: (1) isotopically light carbon (avg. δ13C = −26.3‰) released < 600°C, ascribed to surficial...

The complex variable boundary element method (CVBEM) is used instead of a real variable boundary element method due to the available modeling error evaluation techniques developed. The modeling accuracy is evaluated by the model-user in the determination of an approximative boundary upon which the CVBEM provides an exact solution. Although...

A nonlinear regression groundwater flow model, based on a Galerkin finite-element discretization, was used to analyze steady state two-dimensional groundwater flow in the areally extensive Madison aquifer in a 75,000 mi2 area of the Northern Great Plains. Regression parameters estimated include intrinsic permeabilities of the main aquifer and separate lineament zones,...

A solute-transport model of an irrigated stream-aquifer system was recalibrated because of discrepancies between prior predictions of ground-water salinity trends during 1971-1982 and the observed outcome in February 1982. The original model was calibrated with a 1-year record of data collected during 1971-1972 in an 18-km reach of the Arkansas...

Determinations of the aqueous solubilities of kaolinite at pH 4, and of five smectite minerals in suspensions set between pH 5 and 8, were undertaken with mineral suspensions adjusted to approach equilibrium from over- and undersaturation. After 1,237 days, Dry Branch, Georgia kaolinite...

A generalized model of humic materials in soils and sediments, which is consistent with their observed properties, is presented. This model provides a means of understanding the interaction of hydrophobic pollutants with humic materials. In this model, it is proposed that the humic materials in soils and sediments consist of...

The 2,700-Ma Vermilion Granitic Complex of northern Minnesota is a granite-migmatite terrane composed of supracrustal metasedimentary rocks, mafic rocks, tonalitic and granodioritic plutonic rocks, and granite. The metasedimentary rocks are predominantly graywacke, which has been regionally metamorphosed to garnet-sillimanite-muscovite-bearing biotite schist, and has locally undergone anatexis. The mafic rocks form...

Granitoid rocks of the compositionally zoned Late Cretaceous Toulumne Intrusive Suite in the central Sierra Nevada, California, have initial87Sr/86Sr values (Sri) and143Nd/144Nd values (Ndi) that vary from 0.7057 to 0.7067 and from 0.51239 to 0.51211 respectively. The observed variation of both Sri and Ndi and of chemical composition in rocks...