Mercury in the conterminous United States: computerized data file and computer-plotted map of occurrences
Year: 1977
Type: report
Abstract: A computerized file for mercury in the conterminous United States contains records of mineral occurrences that have or are reported to have mercury.As of October 1977, 1,233 records were stored in the U.S.G.S. Computerized Resources Information Bank (CRIB) .The data was used to print the accompanying map, list of occurrences (table 1), and example record (table 2).The retrieval program used with CRIB allows the user to make highly selective, rapid, file searches which can be made for entire records or portions of records that include desired fields, or words, phrases, numbers, and numeric ranges within a field.The fields selected can be interrelated by Boolean logic statements that allow flexibility in file searches (Calkins and others, 1973; Calkins and others, 1977;Keefer and Calkins, 1977).Information from the file can be printed in three ways: (1) entire records, (2) specified parts of records in tabular format, or (3) lists of selected fields.The accompanying computer-plotted map shows locations and categorized production in flasks (76 pounds or 34.55 kg) for mercury occurrences in the conterminous United States.Eight map symbols indicate occurrences that: (1) are reported, (2) have no known production, (3) produced 1-10 flasks, (4) 11-100 flasks, (5) 101-1,000 flasks, (6) 1,001-10,000 flasks, (7) 10,001-100,000 flasks, and (8) greater than 100,000 flasks.Production records are complete only to 1957 in most entries.If accurate location information was lacking, the occurrence was not plotted on the map.To clarify areas of closely spaced mercury occurrences, 10 areas are enlarged to a scale of 1:500,000 and the largest U.S. producer, the New Almaden district in California, is enlarged to a scale of 1:250,000.Reserves and potential are not indicated on the computer-plotted map, and this is a major distinction between this map and the comprehensive map of mercury deposits by Bailey (1962) on which deposits are categorized by both production and reserves.The accompanying map also shows nonproductive occurrences that are not included on Bailey's map.
DOI: 10.3133/ofr77859
Institution: United States Geological Survey
Language: English
Subfield: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1008992906