Search Results

Part of the 2002 industrial minerals review. Statistics on gemstone production, processing, consumption, prices, and trade are provided. The outlook for gem diamonds and other precious gems is considered....

Statistics on industrial garnet supply, demand, prices, and trade are provided. The outlook for the industrial garnet market is also predicted....

Part of the 2002 industrial minerals review. Production, consumption, cost, and trade data for bentonite during 2002 are presented. Predictions on bentonite markets in 2003 are also provided....

The ammonia industry partially recovered from the effects of high natural gas prices that had closed a significant portion of the industry in 2001. Ammonia production capacity in the United States in 2002 was about 17.1 Mt (18.8 million st). About 53 percent of this capacity was centered in Louisiana,...

The United States had a small quantity of fluorspar production from one mine in Utah during 2002. Most of the fluorspar consumed in the United States continued to come from imports or material purchased from the National Defense Stockpile (NDS). In addition, a small amount of synthetic fluorspar (CaF2) was...

Seawater and natural brines accounted for about 60 percent of U.S. magnesium compounds production during 2002. Dead-burned and caustic-calcined magnesias were recovered from seawater by Premier Chemicals in Florida. They were also recovered from well brines in Michigan by Dow Chemical, Martin Marietta Magnesia Specialties and Rohm & Haas. And...

One of the most threatened remaining populations of lake sturgeon in the Great Lakes is found in the connecting channels between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Only two spawning grounds are presently known to be active in this region, and both are in the St. Clair River. The spawning reef...

In 1997 the Great Lakes Fishery Commission approved a 5-year (1998 to 2002) control strategy to reduce sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) production in the St. Marys River, the primary source of parasitic sea lampreys in northern Lake Huron. An assessment plan was developed to measure the success of the control...

A voluntary waterfowl avoidance area (VWAA) was established on Lake Onalaska in Navigation Pool 7 of the Upper Mississippi River, Wisconsin, USA, in 1986, to reduce boating disturbance to migratory waterfowl. We monitored boater compliance with the VWAA program in 1993 and 1997. Of 1,664 "boating events" observed on Lake...

Early in 2001, Bill Barber and Jay Klinck, avid kayakers and scientists, began planning a northern expedition that would take them across more than 2,000 miles of mostly untamed wilderness along the Yukon River. At the same time, USGS scientists were making plans to study the last, unregulated great river...

The ecosystem response to the 1989 spill of oil from the Exxon Valdez into Prince William Sound, Alaska, shows that current practices for assessing ecological risks of oil in the oceans and, by extension, other toxic sources should be changed. Previously, it was assumed that impacts to populations derive almost...

Time series analysis of physical instream habitat and the riparian zone is not done as frequently as would be beneficial in understanding the fisheries aspects of the aquatic ecosystem. This paper presents two case studies have how time series analysis may be accomplished. Time series analysis is the analysis of...

In the United States, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is responsible for issuing or renewing licenses for hydropower projects owned and operated by power companies. During the licensing process, these companies are required to consult with agencies and other parties that are affected by project operating regimes....

The conterminous United States contains an extensive and generally well-studied record of Last Glacial loess. The loess occurs in diverse physiographic provinces, and under a wide range of climatic and ecological conditions. Both glacial and non-glacia lloess sources are present, and many properties of the loess vary systematically with distance...

The White-tailed Kite (Elanus leucurus) was once a common raptor species in the southern United States. However, by the 1930s, the species was considered on the verge of extinction until the 1940s, when a trend towards recovery was apparent. These dramatic fluctuations may be related to changes in rodent prey...

A concurrent increase in lakewide abundance and decrease in size-at-age of bloater (Coregonus hoyi) in Lake Michigan have suggested density-dependent growth regulation. We investigated these temporal patterns by fitting a dynamic von Bertalanffy model and length–weight relationship with time-varying parameters to mean length- and weight-at-ages (ages 1–7) from annual surveys...

No abstract available....

A. problem with national priorities for control or prevention of aquatic nuisance species is that we often do not know the full extent of the problem, if there is one. To address this issue, we hosted a technical forum and workshop-Phragmites australis: A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing?--with a focus...

This is the third Supplement since publication of the 7th edition of the Check-list of North American Birds (American Ornithologists' Union [AOU] 1998). It summarizes decisions made by the AOU's Committee on Classification and Nomenclature between 1 January 2002 and 31 December 2002....

We estimated annual apparent survival, recruitment, and rate of population growth of breeding Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris), while controlling for transients, by using 18 years of capture-mark-recapture data collected during 1984-2001 at Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History near York, South Carolina. Resident males had lower apparent survival (0.30 ± 0.05 SE) than females (0.43 ± 0.04). Estimates of...