minerals

The USGS releases mineral information essen­tial to the U.S. economy and national security.

U.S. Geological Survey data on U.S. mineral production reflect the domestic housing market decline over the past year. The USGS study shows significant declines in domestic production for a number of construction materials, including cement, gypsum, construction sand and gravel, and crushed stone.

USGS mineral data are used by the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors in preparing its index of industrial production, a principal economic indicator.

This index measures the output of factories, mines, and electric and gas utilities. Output reflects changes in price and demand for mineral commodities used by industries such as construction, transportation equipment and agriculture. Output is an important early indicator of changes in economic activity in those industries.

“We find the data, analysis and assistance provided by the USGS to be invaluable in the preparation of the indexes of industrial production and of capacity,” said Norman J. Morin, senior economist with the Federal Reserve System. “The USGS data add appreciably to the product content of industrial production and, moreover, are in an area where no data are otherwise available.”

This is the first time the USGS has publicly released these data in the same form they are provided to the Federal Reserve System. This change is in response to a recent recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences in the report “Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy.”

The U.S. is the world’s largest user of mineral commodities. Domestic mineral data are collected by the USGS through voluntary cooperation of the mineral industry. The USGS is the sole federal provider of unbiased research on mineral potential, production, consumption and environmental effects.

To see the report read “U.S. Production of Selected Mineral Commodities”

For more information on the NAS report read “Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy”

Visit the USGS Mineral Resources Program for more information.

[Via USGS]

While browsing through some recent geology related photos uploaded on flickr, I discovered the gallery of Daniel Russell, who goes by the flickr user name of Mineralogy. He has some absolutely incredible photos from his personal collection and is one of the most interesting that I’ve seen so far.

Today’s photo is the silicate mineral called Vesuvianite. This particular specimen was collected in the state of New Jersey.

Source: Daniel Russell (Mineralogy) on flickr.

Check out his set of minerals displayed on flickr.

Today’s geology picture of the day is a beautifully captured specimen of amethyst from Cripple Creek, Colorado.

Image credit: Adamantine on flickr.

Found this interesting picture crop up on flickr. It’s a reddish mineral named vanadinite (also known as descloizite). The white mineral beneath the vanadinite is barite.

Image Credit: emeraldcitycreative on flickr.

From the Wikipedia entry:

The color is deep cherry-red to brown or black, and the crystals are transparent or translucent with a greasy lustre; the streak is orange-yellow to brown; specific gravity 5.9 to 6.2; hardness 31/2. A variety known as cuprodescloizite is dull green in color; it contains a considerable amount of copper replacing zinc and some arsenic replacing vanadium. Descloizite occurs in veills of lead ores in association with pyromorphite, vanadinite, wulfenite, etc. Localities are the Sierra de Cordoba in Argentina, Lake Valley in Sierra County, New Mexico, Arizona, Phoenixville in Pennsylvania, and Kappel (Eisen-Kappel) near Klagenfurt in Carinthia.

I messaged emeraldcitycreative on flickr about the origins of this specimen. She acquired it from a Spanish miner who originally found it in Morocco.

(Side note: I really need a spell checker with geologic names and terms. All the papers or posts I write are nothing but a sea of red.)

Three years ago, we wrote about Andrew Alden’s article on ballfield dirt at About.com and found out about Major League Baseball’s official rubbing mud.

To celebrate the start of a new baseball season, this article (warning, PDF file!) from the USGS talks about how the clay material used in ballfields is made.

Image Credit: WisDoc on flickr.

A better clay surface is made up not just of clay, but of a mixture of clay, sand, and silt; the mixture can be screened and blended to optimize its performance. When first introduced, this clay/sand/silt mixture represented a vast improvement over the older solid clay surface used on playing fields and tracks, although it still tends to form ruts and can become slick when wet. This mixture is the most popular clay topping in use today.

[Via USGS]