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Copper (Cu) stamp mill mining in North America from the early 1900s produced a pulverized ore by-product now known as stamp sands (SS). In a mining operation near the city of Gay (Michigan, USA), SS were originally deposited near a Lake Superior beach, but erosion and wave action have moved...

Understanding temporal variations in a geothermal field can support operators in decision making that pertains to optimizing production and mitigating hazards. Between 2021 and 2023, The Geysers geothermal field in northern California was monitored with an array of continuous passive seismic sensors and annual repeat magnetotelluric (MT) measurements. Each of...

We investigated sediment core records from the Cascadia Margin (Ocean Drilling Program Sites 1249 and 1252 at Hydrate Ridge; Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Site U1325 offshore Vancouver Island) using a Zr/Rb heavy mineral proxy from X-ray fluorescence (XRF) core scanning to identify intervals of primary detrital magnetic susceptibility (κ) and...

The Buckner 7.5-minute quadrangle straddles three terrane boundaries in the Piedmont Physiographic Province in central Virginia: the Chopawamsic terrane, the Elk Hill Complex, and the Goochland terrane. In much of the map area, the Elk Hill Complex separates the Chopawamsic and Goochland terranes. Rocks of the Chopawamsic terrane include Ordovician...

The Upper Cretaceous Tuscaloosa marine shale (TMS) potential production area encompasses 20.4 million acres across central Louisiana (LA), southern Mississippi (MS), southwestern Alabama (AL), and a small southwestern section of the Florida panhandle (Hackley et al., 2018). It remains a minor and largely undeveloped unconventional shale oil play with production...

In response to the Energy Act of 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is updating the Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) resource assessment for the Great Basin, USA. The previous 2008 provisional assessment estimated how much electricity could be generated from EGS resources of the western United States using models of...

Introduction Each mineral commodity chapter of the 2025 edition of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Mineral Commodity Summaries (MCS) includes information on events, trends, and issues for each mineral commodity as well as discussions and tabular presentations on domestic industry structure, Government programs, tariffs, 5-year salient statistics, and world production, reserves,...

Small uncrewed aerial systems (sUASs) can be used to quantify emissions of greenhouse and other gases, providing flexibility in quantifying these emissions from a multitude of sources, including oil and gas infrastructure, volcano plumes, wildfire emissions, and natural sources. However, sUAS-based emission estimates are sensitive to the accuracy of wind...

Groundwater flow paths and processes that govern metal mobility and transport are difficult to characterize in mountainous bedrock watersheds. Despite the difficulty in holistic characterization, conceptual understanding of subsurface hydrologic and geochemical processes is key to developing remediation plans for locations affected by acid mine drainage, such as the Upper...

Reports of magmatic anhydrite are relatively rare, with only ~30 occurrences documented worldwide so far. However, magmatic anhydrite saturation is difficult to recognize because anhydrite decomposes rapidly in near-surface environments. In most cases, only anhydrite inclusions shielded within other phenocryst phases were able to survive. Alternatively, since anhydrite phenocrysts preserved...

Exposure to ambient particulate matter (PM) with an aerodynamic diameter of <10 μm (PM10) is a well-established health hazard. There is increasing evidence that geogenic (Earth-derived) particles can induce adverse biological effects upon inhalation, though there is high variability in particle bioreactivity that is associated with particle source and physicochemical properties....

A large Geologic Carbon Sequestration (GCS) hub has been proposed in Kemper County, Mississippi. The target injection interval consists of numerous Cretaceous-aged deep saline aquifers overlain by a competent and extensive regional sealing layer. Above the seal, the deepest Underground Source of Drinking Water (USDW) at the site is the...

Surprise Valley, located in the northwestern Great Basin, is an asymmetric extensional basin that marks a major tectonic transition between the relatively un-extended volcanic Modoc Plateau to the west, and the Basin and Range to the east that has undergone 10-15% extension. In addition, it sits just north of...

The Chemehuevi Formation is a distinctive 50−150-m-thick wedge-shaped Pleistocene sedimentary unit deposited by the Colorado River. It lines the perimeters of the river’s floodplains and bedrock canyons for more than 600 km between the mouth of the Grand Canyon and the delta region in the Gulf of California. The formation...

Plastic pollution and microplastic (MP, 1 µm to 5 mm) generation are growing problems affecting the global community and a wide range of natural and disturbed environments. Urban and suburban waterways are directly impacted by plastic pollution due to their proximity to population centers and many different types single use plastic waste...

Mammoth Lakes, California hosts a productive hydrothermal system within the seismically active south moat of Long Valley Caldera. Surficial evidence of the shallow hydrothermal system includes discrete zones of tree-kill dispersed between Shady Rest Park and the Casa Diablo Geothermal Power Plant (40 MW), as well as east of the...

New geologic mapping (Wells and others, 2020b) and geophysical mapping (Blakely and others, 2000; McPhee and others, 2014; Wells and others, 2020a) document kilometers of Cenozoic right-lateral offset along the Gales Creek Fault Zone, a major, northwest-striking fault zone forming the boundary between the Tualatin Valley and the Coast Range....

Energy consumption in the United States (U.S.) and across the world is shifting away from traditional fossil fuels like coal and oil, and towards natural gas and renewable sources, including hydrogen. Because gas demand is typically greatest during cold seasons and renewable sources sometimes produce variable supplies, it is important...

The northeastern portion of the Reese River basin in north-central Nevada is the focus of detailed geophysical and geological studies as part of the INGENIOUS project, which aims to identify new, commercially viable hidden geothermal systems in the Great Basin region of the western U.S. This location, herein referred to...

The Tragedy of the Commons is a well studied problem in the literature of ecology, economics, and environmental policy which illustrates the deleterious consequences of managing common pool resources when individual and social incentives are misaligned. In this work, we apply a simple model of carbon sequestration in a deep...

Layered intrusions are plutonic bodies of cumulates that form by the crystallization of mantle-derived melts. These intrusions are characterized by igneous layering distinguishable by shifts in mineralogy, texture, or composition. Layered intrusions have been fundamental to our understanding of igneous petrology; however, it is their status as important repositories of...

In 2016, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior requested that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) produce a publicly available and annually updated database of estimated greenhouse gas emissions associated with the extraction and use of fossil fuels from Federal lands. The first report in this series included...

Depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs are subsurface geological structures capable of sequestering vast quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) as well as storing other energy gases for later usage, such as natural gas, and potentially hydrogen (H2). Here we outline a methodology to quantify multi-gas storage resources in depleted conventional gas reservoirs for...

Introduction Africa is emerging as a leading source for minerals used in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles and in other renewable energy applications. New graphite, lithium, and rare-earth mines have or could be opened in African countries from 2017 through 2026.Estimates of production capacities for graphite, lithium, and rare-earth...

Land managers and conservation practitioners need practical tools to protect rare species in light of rapidly changing climate and land use patterns. Habitat suitability models are tools that can inform multiple-use land management decisions and target conservation actions. The narrow endemic Zuni fleabane, Erigeron rhizomatus, occurs on lands managed for...