Geology topics
Source-linked reports with geographic coverage including Rio Arriba County, New Mexico.
A distinctive new fossil freshwater diatom species, Cymbella langii McLaughlin & Andrews, is described from a diatomaceous earth deposit in the Chamita Formation of the Santa Fe Group near Espaiiola, central New Mexico. This deposit is dated by K-Ar and mammalian biostratigraphy as Hemphillian or late Miocene in age.
The Chama River Canyon Wilderness and Roadless Area have a moderate to high potential for the presence of small deposits of copper with associated uranium and silver. These deposits, as yet undetected, would occur in the Permian Cutler Formation and in the lower part of the Triassic Chinle Formation, rock units that are, for the most part, present only in the subsurface. The presence of these deposits is inferred because such deposits occur in rocks of equivalent age in adjacent areas. Gypsum, of probable minable quality and quantity, occurs throughout the area. Oil and gas are possibly present in Pennsylvanian strata in the subsurface, although no drilling in the study area has tested this hypothesis. Other commodities, including noncopper-related uranium, kaolinite, chromium, vanadium, manganese, and bitumen, although present locally in anomalous concentrations, do not appear to constitute potential resources for these commodities.
No abstract available.
Project GASBUGGY was an experiment performed by the Atomic Energy Commission, the El Paso Natural Gas Company, and the Bureau of Mines, U.S. Department of the Interior, to determine the effectiveness of a method for increasing the recovery of natural gas by large-scale fracturing of a gas-bearing formation with an underground nuclear explosion. The Project GASBUGGY nuclear explosive of 26 kilotons design yield was detonated on Sunday, December 10, 1967, at 1230:00 Mountain Standard Time. Lawrence Radiation Laboratory reported that the explosive was emplaced at 4240 ft below the ground surface, 1770 ft from the west line and 1218 ft from the south line in Section 36 of Township 29 North, Range 4 West, in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, about 55 air miles east of the city of Farmington, New Mexico. The geodetic coordinates are: Latitude 36?40'40.4" North, and Longitude 107?12'30.3" West. The elevation of surface ground zero was 7204 ft above Mean Sea Level. The detonation occurred in the Lewis shale about 40 ft below its contact with the gas-bearing Pictured Cliffs sandstone. Early indications are that the explosive performed satisfactorily. This document is submitted as a preliminary data report. Additional analyses of the data will be prepared at a later time.
The core herein described came from the first test hole drilled for Project Gasbuggy--a project designed to stimulate gas production by the use of nuclear explosives from the Pictured Cliffs Sandstone in the northeastern part of the San Juan Basin, N. Mex. Project Gasbuggy is a cooperative experiment principally involving the El Paso Natural Gas Co., the Atomic Energy Commission, and the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Permission to describe the core from the well was kindly granted by these three organizations.
Wartime increases in demand for mica of strategic quality, beryllium, tantalum, columbium, tin, lithium, and uranium have focused attention on pegmatite deposits more sharply during recent years than ever before. Not only have numerous technical developments of the past few decades involved new uses for these commodities, but during the recent period of emergency these and other uses were greatly expanded. The attendant rapid increases in demand and a heavy dependence on foreign sources of supply soon confirmed the need for a careful appraisal of domestic resources of the minor pegmatite minerals. This need had been foreseen prior to 1939, when the Federal Geological Survey (GS) began a program of pegmatite investigations that attained nation-wide scope by the spring of 1942.