CompuServe Messages

Guy, "logging, quarrying…" Hmm, That reads more like Capitalist Valley than Socialist Valley. >Well, how about this? It's been a few years but William J Kroll and associates of the Albany Research Center of the Bureau developed a process for extracting ductile zirconium, pioneering a multi-million (maybe billion?) rare metals industry there…" Either I don't understand your example or you misunderstood my statement. What I meant didn't refer to reasearch. Definitely the Bur. of Mines has done a lot of reasearch in metallurgy and other things related to mining that have resulted in processes that have been put to good use by private enterprise. Likewise the Bu of Mines and USGS have done a lot of field research in finding metal anomalies, mapping geology, etc. that private companies have used to assist in finding ore deposits. What I was thinking of was the literature–there isn't a whole lot of it that I am aware of that was either researched and published by the private sector that is easy to locate and low priced (or free) or even Bu of Mines or USGS data that has been compiled and or re-published by the private sector and is easily available at a low price (or free). Sure, De Lorme probably uses USGS mapping data (although I just checked my Idaho Atlas and couldn't find any info on where the data came from) to create their maps, but the USGS maps are much more important for my use, and I expect for most other geologists. The geologic mapping data from the USGS is of great importance to education, mining, mineral collectors, and land use. There is little or no data available from the private sector to aid the political powers that be in matters of environmental geology, water flow/geohydrology, and geological hazards (earthquakes and volcanic specifically). Hopefully, this point will have some meaning to those swinging the budget axe. It would be quite entertaining to watch the Governors of Wash. and Ore. and mayors of Portland and Seattle for instance, if Mt. Rainier or Mt. Hood started putting on a show and suggesting that an eruption might be on the way. There would be zero new information to help them decide if evacuation would be prudent. (Of course, it would be entertaining to watch the political show even if they did have current data from the USGS!) Lanny