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There appears to be surprisingly little definite information on the viscosity of lavas. With few exceptions writers content themselves with such general and indefinite terms as “mobile”, “viscous”, or “highly viscous”. Apparently the only attempts to actually calculate viscosity have been made on Hawaiian lavas.
The by‐laws adopted at the meeting of the Section of Hydrology in 1933 provided that the membership of research committees should be reconstituted every three years. There have, accordingly, been some changes in the membership of the Committee on Underground ‐ Water . Certain members have retired because of pressure of other duties or because they are no longer actively engaged in ground‐ water work. Dr. O. E. Meinzer, who retired as Chairman of the Section of Hydrology, has agreed to serve on the Committee , and probably two or three other men will be appointed to make contact with special phases of the field covered by the Committee . It is with regret that the Chairman reports the loss to the Committee by the death of A. F. Melcher, who had contributed much to the science of ground‐ water hydrology by his studies on permeability and absorption of sedimentary formations for water , oil, and gas. ©19 34
In the paper entitled “The measurement of the permeability of porous media for homogeneous fluids” by R. D. Wyckoff and others [42] a unit of permeability is proposed which is based on centimeters, seconds, and atmospheres of pressure (76 centimeters of mercury). In 1923, when the Hydrologic Laboratory of the United States Geological Survey was organized, much study was given to the question of a coefficient of permeability, and a coefficient was adopted which is based on feet and gallons a day (U.S. Geol. Survey Water-Supply Paper 596, p. 148). This coefficient has been extensively used and has proved very satisfactory in ground-water work. It has the merit of being readily applicable to field-conditions. It is, moreover, of convenient size, the coefficients of most water-bearing materials being integers of two or three figures, that is, between 10 and 1000. It was adopted in place of Slichter's “transmission-constant” (U.S. Geol. Survey Water-Supply Paper 67, p. 27, 1902), after much careful consideration, largely because the “transmission-constant” of most water-bearing materials is inconvenient in being only a small decimal.
An outstanding achievement of the Section of Hydrology has been the work of the Committee on Glaciers in assembling the existing records of the advance and retreat of the glaciers in the Western States and in Alaska, encouraging various agencies in making periodic observations, systematizing and standardizing the work, and providing for the compilation and preservation of the data obtained from year to year. The fluctuation of lake levels is a closely related subject that is equally fundamental in the study of hydrology. In 1922 I published a map giving the distribution of 68 Pleistocene lakes in the Basin and Range province and showed that the desiccation of these lakes could have been caused by change in temperature as well as change in precipitation (Geol. Soc. Amer. Bull., v. 33. pp. 541–552. 1922). Abundant and convincing evidences of changes in climate in the Pleistocene epoch or at its end are afforded both by the ancient drift-sheets and by the ancient lake features, but the question as to the relative importance of changes in temperature and changes in precipitation is still very obscure.
In the following list brief statements have been added to certain references to call attention to special phases of ground ‐ water problems which are not apparent from the titles. Abstracts of most of these papers have been or will be published in the Annotated Bibliography of Economic Geology.
The personnel of this Committee during the past year, practically the same as during the previous year, has been as follows: C. S. Howard, Chairman—United States Geological Survey, Washington, D.C. L. C. Case—Gypsy Oil Company, Tulsa, Oklahoma. W. D. Collins—United States Geological Survey, Washington, D.C. H. F. Flynn—United States Engineer Office, 35 South Ninth Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. W. P. Kelley—University of California, Riverside, California. Alfred C. Lane—Tufts College, Tufts College, Massachusetts. Augustus Locke—477 Mills Building, San Francisco, California. R. D. Leitch—United States Bureau of Mines, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. H. T. Logan—United States Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C. Thomas S. Lovering—United States Geological Survey, Washington, D.C. Thomas E. Means—111 Sutter Street, San Francisco, California. F. B. Plummer—University of Texas, Austin, Texas. J. W. Sale—United States Food and Drug Administration, Washington, D.C. C S. Scofield—Bureau of Plant Industry, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. Thomas G. Thompson—University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
Snow ‐ fields and the so‐called névés of glaciers on lofty mountains often present a peculiar, honeycombed appearance, the surface being pitted with deep cell‐like hollows a foot or two feet in diameter and from a few inches to several feet in depth. When typically developed these hollows are closely spaced, the divides between them consisting merely of attenuated blades and pinnacles of hard, granular snow (Fig. 1). The hollows are alined roughly in rows and sunk at a uniform, high angle, all in the same direction.
The water in artesian aquifers is confined under pressure . Under ideal conditions in a perfectly rigid artesian reservoir a change of pressure in one part of the reservoir should produce a corresponding change of pressure in all other parts of the reservoir. Theoretically, the transmission of pressure should take place rapidly and without any movement of water other than the small amount resulting from the compressibility of water. However, observations under natural conditions show that the transmission of pressure is not always rapid and that the rate of transmission appears to be determined in great part by the distance traversed and the magnitude of the change of pressure . There are many reasons for believing that artesian aquifers and their confining beds are not perfectly rigid but that they are elastic and capable of compression and dilation (O. E. Meinzer, Compressibility and elasticity of artesian aquifers , Econ. Geol., v. 23, pp. 263–291, 1928). This appears to be the cause of the lack of rapidity of transmission of pressure in artesian aquifers .
In recent years the Water Resources Branch of the United States Geological Surrey has given considerable attention to the relation of ground ‐ water to stream ‐ flow . One locality in which this relation is being studied is about 13 miles from Washington, near Colesvllle, Maryland, where a Kinnison float‐gage is being maintained in a well In connection with the operation of a gaging‐station on the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River. The well is opposite the gaging‐station, on a gentle slope about one. fifth of a mile from the stream , where the land‐surface ia about 20 feet above the bed of the stream . The well is an abandoned dug well 20 feet deep and is lined with loose stone and presumably admits water freely. The fluctuations of the water ‐ level in the well are believed to afford a fairly close index of fluctuations in the water ‐table at the well‐site and may be typical of the fluctuations that occur in a large part of the area drained by the Northwest Branch above the gaging‐station, consisting of about 21 square miles of gently rolling farm‐land. During the period of the observations herein considered the water ‐ level in the well ranged from 10 to 16 feet below the ground ‐surface at the well and from 10 to 4 feet above the bed of the stream .
Active work under the recently authorized project relating to floods and their frequencies began in March, and such progress as may be reported at this time is largely that of organization and preliminary planning. One of the outstanding and impressive features of the organization is the provision for cooperative effort, whereby the mature judgment and possibly diverse viewpoints of various committees and consultants may be utilized to the fullest advantage. This arrangement should provide the necessary safeguard against adoption of immature individual views or favorite methods of analysis, to the exclusion of others of equal or greater merit. On the other hand, it is conceivable that too much of the limited time might be consumed in preliminary discussions of basic principles, methods of analysis, and formulas dealing with either magnitude or frequency of floods, if unanimity of opinion among several professional groups must precede the main work under the project authorized. In effect, such a procedure would require a practical and workable solution before the basic data had become available. To avoid such delays, a definite line of procedure has beer, proposed for consideration.
A survey of the ground‐ water resources of the region in which Houston and Galveston are situated was started in December 1930 by the United States Geological Survey in cooperation with the Texas Board of Water Engineers. In connection with this survey a special study is being made of the geochemical relations of the ground‐waters of an area about 25 miles wide and 90 miles long, extending from Galveston northwestward through Houston. This study considers the influence on the ground‐waters of the age and degree of weathering of the outcrop formations, base‐exchange materials, salt ‐domes, and salt ‐ water encroachment . In this paper, however, attention is confined to salt ‐ water encroachment along the line from Galveston to Houston (Fig. 1).
Volcanic rocks occur from Pennsylvania to Alabama in the Piedmont Plateau, Blue Ridge Area, and the Great Valley. They include volcanics of pre ‐Cambrian, Cambrian, and Middle Ordovician age. The most abundant types are basalt, andesite, rhyollte flows, tuffs, ash‐beds, and bentonite. The paper will discuss the types of volcanics In the different areas, their metamorphism, the relations of volcanics to the adjoining sedimentary and igneous rocks , and the facts on which their age is based.
The study of the Highwood Mountains was undertaken by a group of men from Harvard University under a grant from the Shaler Memorial Fund of the Department of Geology. The work was under the general direction of Larsen, who, with the assistance of Norman A. Haskell, mapped most of the volcanic rocks. Hurlbut and Griggs worked mostly on the laccoliths, Burgess on the stocks, and Buie on the dikes. The party spent two summers in the field. The laboratory work is far from complete. We cooperated closely in all the work.
The history of vulcanism in Alaska is a topic of great universal interest, but one which has had no adequate treatment. For some years the writer has been accumulating comparative data on this subject, and it is hoped that this information may some time be sufficiently amplified and coordinated to justify a general description of the sequential igneous history of Alaska. The scope of such an undertaking, however, can well be appreciated from the statement that Alaska is nearly a fifth the size of the United States, and that geologic studies have shown that igneous rocks have originated in Alaska in every geologic period, excepting perhaps the Cambrian and the Silurian. Therefore, in the present paper, it has seemed best to present only a part of this interesting record, and perhaps in subsequent papers to expand the areal and geologic limits of discussion. ©1935. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
Rocks of rhyolitic type in eastern Idaho and adjacent parts of Wyoming were observed by the Teton Division of the Hayden Surveys under Orestes St. John (Report of the geological field work of the Teton Division, U.S. Geol. and Geog. Surv. Terr., 11th Ann. Rep., pp. 498–504, 1879), who described them as trachytes. He noted their relations to different types of underlying sedimentary rocks and their tendency to conform with the preexisting topography, but considered them all as flows. ©1935. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
The annual report this year consists almost wholly of a brief summary of investigations in progress in different parts of the country. It is by no means complete, and the Chairman of the Committee will be glad to receive information in regard to investigations that have not been mentioned. The outstanding feature of the past year has been the focusing of public attention on problems of underground water, as a result of the drought-conditions, the activities of the National and State resource and planning surveys, and the creation of emergency-relief projects.
General Pumping from wells for irrigation —The Division of Irrigation, Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, United States Department of Agriculture, is investigating the economics and practice of pumping from wells for irrigation in the western United States. The study is under the charge of Carl Rohwer. Its aims are (1) to gather data pertinent to the practical and economical phases of pumping for irrigation, including mechanical units, wells, methods of pump‐installation, the assembled plant, and the efficiency of the various units, and (2) to compile all available information on methods and cost of well‐drilling and the numerous factors influencing them, such as various types of casing and relation of diameter of casing to yield. The field‐work on both phases of the study is about complete. The manuscript on the first phase of the project is in process of preliminary editing. It is intended to publish the results of the study in two bulletins, probably as Department circulars.
The precipitation in Nebraska has been considerably less than normal in the last four years, and in consequence the ground ‐ water level in many parts of the State has declined to a marked extent. Moreover, in some parts of Nebraska the ground ‐ water level has declined as the result of land‐drainage, and in other parts it has risen as the result of irrigation with water diverted from streams. These changes in ground ‐ water level produced by drainage, irrigation, and decreased precipitation have caused wells to fail, streams to cease flowing, lakes to become dry, and land to become water ‐logged. Consequently, interest in fluctuations of ground ‐ water level has greatly increased, and the need of a systematic collection of base‐data for the future study of ground ‐ water problems has been recognized.