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At least 289 records · Page 16Linked to original sources
USGS2025

Gulf Coast Basin CORE-CM initiative final report

The Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-BEG) is leading the Gulf Coast Carbon Ore, Rare Earth, and Critical Minerals (CORE-CM) Initiative to assess the potential to produce critical minerals (CMs), including rare earth elements (REEs) from coal, coal ash, and produced water related to oil and gas production, and related materials (alumina processing waste [red mud], heavy mineral sands, graphite, and zeolite) within the Gulf Coast Basin. This project represents the first phase in a long-term program and provides reconnaissance data that will be foundational for future work by assessing resources and suggesting plans to be conducted in future work and expanding stakeholder engagement. The project includes several tasks designed to identify, characterize, and assess several necessary aspects for development of CMs and REEs in the Gulf Coast Basin.

Gulf Coast basin↗
USGS2007

From Projectile Points to Microprocessors - The Influence of Some Industrial Minerals

In the language of economic geology, Earth materials are classified as metallic ores, fuel minerals, gemstones, and industrial minerals. Most people know that metallic ores yield shiny, conductive, ductile elements such as copper, iron, or gold. Most understand that energy-producing coals constitute a fuel mineral. Likewise, dazzling rubies and rare sapphires are universally recognized as gemstones. The fourth group, industrial minerals, is largely unknown to the general public, even though industrial minerals are as essential to daily life as metals and fuel minerals. This report examines the occurrence and practical uses of nine important industrial minerals - constituting just a few of the more than 50 industrial minerals that shape human culture.

Circular↗
USGS2011

Development of industrial minerals in Colorado

Technology and engineering have helped make mining safer and cleaner for both humans and the environment. Inevitably, mineral development entails costs as well as benefits. Developing a mine is an environmental, engineering, and planning challenge that must conform to many Federal, State, and local regulations. Community collaboration, creative design, and best management practices of sustainability and biodiversity can be positive indicators for the mining industry. A better understanding of aesthetics, culture, economics, geology, climate, vegetation and wildlife, topography, historical significance, and regional land planning is important in resolving land-use issues and managing mineral resources wisely. Ultimately, the consuming public makes choices about product use (including water, food, highways, housing, and thousands of other items) that influence operations of the mineral industry. Land planners, resource managers, earth scientists, designers, and public groups have a responsibility to consider sound scientific information, society's needs, and community appeals in making smart decisions concerning resource use and how complex landscapes should change. An effort to provide comprehensive geosciences data for land management agencies in central Colorado was undertaken in 2003 by scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey and the Colorado Geological Survey. This effort, the Central Colorado Assessment Project, addressed a variety of land-use issues: an understanding of the availability of industrial and metallic rocks and minerals, the geochemical and environmental effects of historic mining activity on surface water and groundwater, and the geologic controls on the availability and quality of groundwater. The USDA Forest Service and other land management agencies have the opportunity to contribute to the sustainable management of natural aggregate and other mineral resources through the identification and selective development of mineral resources and the reclamation of mines on lands that they administer. The information in this Circular will help them carry out that task.

Colorado↗
USGS2005

Huminite reflectance measurements of Paleocene and Upper Cretaceous coals from borehole cuttings, Zavala and Dimmit counties, South Texas

The reflectance of huminite in 19 cuttings samples was determined in support of ongoing investigations into the coal bed methane potential of subsurface Paleocene and Upper Cretaceous coals of South Texas. Coal cuttings were obtained from the Core Research Center of the Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin. Geophysical logs, mud-gas logs, driller's logs, completion cards, and scout tickets were used to select potentially coal-bearing sample suites and to identify specific sample depths. Reflectance measurements indicate coals of subbituminous rank are present in a wider area in South Texas than previously recognized.

Open-File Report↗
USGS2007

Coal Rank and Stratigraphy of Pennsylvanian Coal and Coaly Shale Samples, Young County, North-Central Texas

Vitrinite reflectance measurements were made to determine the rank of selected subsurface coal and coaly shale samples from Young County, north-central Texas, for the National Coal Resources Database System State Cooperative Program conducted by the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin. This research is the continuation of a pilot study that began in adjacent Archer County, and forms part of a larger investigation of the coalbed methane resource potential of Pennsylvanian coals in north-central Texas. A total of 57 samples of coal and coaly shale fragments were hand-picked from drill cuttings from depths of about 2,000 ft in five wells, and Ro determinations were made on an initial 10-sample subset. Electric-log correlation of the sampled wells indicates that the collected samples represent coal and coaly shale layers in the Strawn (Pennsylvanian), Canyon (Pennsylvanian), and Cisco (Pennsylvanian-Permian) Groups. Coal rank in the initial sample subset ranges from lignite (Ro=0.39), in a sample from the Cisco Group at a depth of 310 to 320 ft, to high volatile bituminous A coal (Ro=0.91) in a sample from the lower part of the Canyon Group at a depth of 2,030 to 2,040 ft.

Open-File Report↗
USGS2013

The importance of mineralogical input into geometallurgy programs

Mineralogy is the link between ore formation and ore extraction. It is the most fundamental component of geomet programs, and the most important aspect of a life-of-project approach to mineral resource projects. Understanding orebodies is achieved by understanding the mineralogy and texture of the materials, throughout the process, because minerals hold the information required to unlock the value they contain. Geomet mineralogy programs absolutely require the appropriate expertise and at least three steps of mineral characterisation prior to using semi-automated or other methods: field examination, thorough core logging, and optical microscopy. Economic geological inputs for orebody characterisation are necessary for orebody understanding, and are exemplified by current research in the Zambian Copperbelt, where revised sequence stratigraphy and understanding of alteration, metasomatism and metamorphism can be used to predict topical issues at mine sites. Environmental inputs for sustainability characterisation are demonstrated by recent work on tailings from the Leadville, Colorado, USA area, including linking mineralogy to water quality issues. Risk assessments need to take into account the technical uncertainties around geological variability and mineral extractability, and mineralogy is the only metric that can be used to make this risk contribution.

Conference Paper↗
USGS2017

Critical mineral resources of the United States—Economic and environmental geology and prospects for future supply

Summary Mineral commodities are vital for economic growth, improving the quality of life, providing for national defense, and the overall functioning of modern society. Minerals are being used in larger quantities than ever before and in an increasingly diverse range of applications. With the increasing demand for a considerably more diverse suite of mineral commodities has come renewed recognition that competition and conflict over mineral resources can pose significant risks to the manufacturing industries that depend on them. In addition, production of many mineral commodities has become concentrated in relatively few countries (for example, tungsten, rare-earth elements, and antimony in China; niobium in Brazil; and platinum-group elements in South Africa and Russia), thus increasing the risk for supply disruption owing to political, social, or other factors. At the same time, an increasing awareness of and sensitivity to potential environmental and health issues caused by the mining and processing of many mineral commodities may place additional restrictions on mineral supplies. These factors have led a number of Governments, including the Government of the United States, to attempt to identify those mineral commodities that are viewed as most “critical” to the national economy and (or) security if supplies should be curtailed. This book presents resource and geologic information on the following 23 mineral commodities currently among those viewed as important to the national economy and national security of the United States: antimony (Sb), barite (barium, Ba), beryllium (Be), cobalt (Co), fluorite or fluorspar (fluorine, F), gallium (Ga), germanium (Ge), graphite (carbon, C), hafnium (Hf), indium (In), lithium (Li), manganese (Mn), niobium (Nb), platinum-group elements (PGE), rare-earth elements (REE), rhenium (Re), selenium (Se), tantalum (Ta), tellurium (Te), tin (Sn), titanium (Ti), vanadium (V), and zirconium (Zr). For a number of these commodities—for example, graphite, manganese, niobium, and tantalum—the United States is currently wholly dependent on imports to meet its needs. The first two chapters (A and B) deal with general information pertinent to the study of mineral resources. Chapters C through V describe individual mineral commodities and include an overview of current uses of the commodity, identified resources and their distribution nationally and globally, the state of current geologic knowledge, the potential for finding additional deposits nationally and globally, and geoenvironmental issues that may be related to the production and uses of the commodity. These chapters are updates of the commodity chapters published in 1973 in U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 820, “United States Mineral Resources.”

Professional Paper↗
USGS2019

Economic analysis for U.S. Geological Survey Coal Basin Assessments

This report presents economic principles and applications as they pertain to the U.S. Geological Survey’s U.S. Coal Resources and Reserves Assessment Project. This report compares commercial and governmental applications of economic principles and evaluation techniques. Common practices are described for evaluating the commercial investment potential of coal properties and calculating the government reserve potential of major U.S. coal basins. This report discusses economic principles that are applicable to typical mining feasibility studies as well as those categories and cost items that are often misused.

Open-File Report↗
USGS1979

Land use statistics for West Virginia, Part I

The West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey and the United States Geological Survey have completed a cooperative program to provide land-use and land-cover maps and data for the State. This program begins to satisfy a longstanding need for a consistent level of detail, standardization in categorization, and scale of compilation for land-use and land-cover maps and data. The statistical information contained in this Bulletin provides land-use acreage tabulations for the first 20 counties that have been completed. Statistics are being compiled for the remaining counties and will be published shortly. This information has been derived from the recently completed Land-Use Map of West Virginia (on open file at the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey - Environmental Section). In addition to land-use acreage, we have also included land-use percent. All statistics throughout this Bulletin are in the same format for ease of comparison.

West Virginia↗
USGS1964

Radioelement dispersion in a sedimentary environment and its effect on uranium exploration

The radioelement content of the major part of the southeast Texas Coastal Plain sedimentary sequence falls within a range common for sandstones and shales. Exceptions to the normal limit are mainly in small, widely scattered areas. One anomalous area, however, covers several tens of square miles and contains most of the important uranium deposits. Both mechanical and chemical dispersion of radioelements takes place in the immediate vicinity of the ore deposits, though no attempt is made to extend this local dispersion model to the large, regional gamma radiation anomaly. It is suggested that the point-source concept for sedimentary uranium deposits is unrealistic and that conventional aeroradiometric survey grid spacing can be substantially enlarged without seriously reducing efficiency in uranium exploration .

Texas↗
USGS1961

Sulfide ores formed from sulfide-deficient solutions 1

Assuming that many hydrothermal ore deposits are formed from emanations given off from a magma at depth while it cools through the interval in which latent heat of crystallization is generated, it is shown that this cooling interval for magmatic bodies of moderate size must be measured in tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Emanations from such a magma should change at the source with time: relatively insoluble volatiles should depart early and the more soluble ones late; the general order is probably sulfur gases and oxides of carbon, water, chlorides, and fluorides. Experimental and field evidence indicates that this order approximates the increasing solubility of these gases in natural magmas. Theoretical considerations show that within a hydrothermal conduit a relatively small gradient would soon be established between the magma and the surface. A small gradient suggests that temperature drop is a minor factor in precipitating substances in solution , whereas a drop in pressure and reaction with wall rocks or with material precipitated from earlier emanations would be of major importance. The sulfur-rich early emanations tend to react with indigenous iron of the country rock, or with iron carried by carbon dioxide-rich solutions to where a marked pressure drop occurs; either of these reactions will form abundant early iron sulfide . Later sulfur-deficient emanations, which then carry soluble halides of ore metals, react with this early iron sulfide to precipitate the ore mineral sulfides by replacement and deposition with loss of iron to the solution . Precipitation of much sulfide ore is thus commonly accomplished by sulfur that was fixed near the site of the ore body by earlier emanations from the magmatic source; a large amount of ore , however, may be precipitated from late-stage magmatic solutions where they mingle with early-stage sulfur-bearing solutions from a different magmatic source.

Economic Geology↗