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The Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS) is a department of the University of Kentucky that provides information on the geology of Kentucky, but has variously over the course of its history been a state level office, or a sub-division of a state combined geology and forestry department, at times its official State Geologist being prohibited by law from being associated with the University of Kentucky.
It is one of the United States's oldest geological organizations, pre-dating the United States Geological Survey by 25 years. [1] It has worked with the USGS in several joint mapping programs, and because of one such program from 1949 to 1956 Kentucky became the first state of the United States to be fully topographically mapped at a scale of 1:24,000, which was then extended in a project run from 1960 to 1978 to have the whole of Kentucky geologically mapped at 1:24,000 scale, at a cost of US$21,000,000(equivalent to $98,100,000 in 2023) and involving an estimated 660 person-years. [2]
Its published reports are collected into several series. [3]
The KGS conducts basic and applied geological and mineralogical research on the geology of Kentucky, and compiles, archives, and publishes data. [1] The First to Sixth Surveys reported primarily on useful minerals of the state, its economic geology, including coal, oil, gas, building stone, and road building materials. [1]
A lot of its research has focussed on fossil fuel resources, with a major project undertaken between 1974 and 1983 to assess how much of those resources were left to mine; limestone deposits; stratigraphic reports of coal beds; the drainage of the basin of the Kentucky River; and subsurface structures. [2]
As the state's official repository for records of oil and gas drilling, it has some 225,000 wells on record, with well and core samples. [2]
Before the first Geological Survey of Kentucky was carried out, an initial reconnaissance was performed by Professor William Williams Mather in 1838, hired by Governor James Clark, after State Senator Wingate and State Representative J. T. Morehead had introduced resolutions in the Kentucky General Assembly on 1837-12-12 calling for a survey to be performed. [4]
The full, First Series, geological survey was established by law on 1854-03-04 and only partly completed by David Dale Owen before he died. [4] It comprised four volumes, 2012 pages, of topographic maps, and rock and soil analyses. [4] There were also several plates with fossils. [1]
The Second survey was headed by a formal State Geologist, Governor Preston H. Leslie appointing N. S. Shaler from Harvard University for the task in 1873. [4] It took 7 years to complete, with a team of geologists working under Shaler, and yielded a Second Series Part One of reports that came to six volumes, 2886 pages, with an ancillary set of memoirs. [5] It had a budget of US$10,000(equivalent to $254,333 in 2023), and one of Shaler's team was chemist Robert Peter who analysed soil composition throughout the state. [1]
Shaler was, however, forced to resign as State Geologist when the legislature decided that the office-holder had to be a resident of Kentucky, and he was replaced by John Robert Procter, his office assistant, who was not a geologist by training and who also had to double up as the Director of the State Immigration Bureau. [5] This resulted in the Second Series Part Two that came to eight volumes, 3020 pages, and a further 400 pages of "county surveys" in pamphlets. [5]
A lot of this, at least 1336 pages worth, was a simple copy of the Shaler work. [5] Procter simply had neither the time nor the expertise for the job, and the Survey petered out when he left for Washington in 1893. [6]
A 1904 law established a Third survey, and directly appointed the head of the Geological Museum, professor Charles J. Norwood, as its Director. [5] Norwood and the geologists working for him produced 2761 pages in nineteen volumes, two county reports, and four progress reports. [5]
A 1912-03-07 law established a Fourth survey, which reestablished an office of State Geologist once more, abolishing the joint office of Director of the Survey and Curator of the Geological Museum that Norwood had held. [7] The law also required that the State Geologist not have any concurrent academic position, such as Norwood had had at the University of Kentucky, requiring it to be a full-time position. [2]
The State Geologist was a gubernatorial appointment again, and that year James B. McCreary appointed Joseph B. Hoeing to the office, who had worked for all three of Shaler, Procter, and Norwood as cartographer and assistant geologist and who had also been State Forester. [7] [2] The Fourth Series of reports was 4280 pages in five volumes and four miscellaneous reports, with an accompanying series of maps at the county, region, and state levels. [7]
Hoeing resigned when in 1918 the legislature abolished the State Geologist office and the Geological Survey, replacing it with a Deputy level office under the Commissioner of Geology and Forestry, abolishing the State Forester office at the same time. [7] Forester John Earle Barton was appointed to this new Deputy Commissioner post on 1918-07-01. [5]
Although there had been economic forces behind prior surveys, the Fifth Series of reports was especially strongly motivated by Kentucky's 1917 oil boom, and professor Willard R. Jillson of the University of Kentucky became an assistant geologist under Barton in 1918 to provide oil and gas surveys in particular. [7] [2] At Barton's recommendation, A. O. Stanley appointed Jillson as Barton's replacement on 1919-02-01. [7] The Fifth Series was 1567 pages comprising four bulletins, and several mineral resource report pamphlets. [7]
As the doubled-up responsibilities of Procter had done before, the combination of Forestry and Geology under a single Commissioner led to time and budget conflicts between the two, and in response in 1920 the legislature set up a separate State Geologist post again, abolishing the joint Geology and Forestry department, to which Edwin P. Morrow appointed Jillson on 1920-04-01. [8]
The Sixth survey produced a Sixth Series of reports, in twenty-five volumes, with roughly fifty minor additional articles, alongside thirty detailed county maps of coal and natural gas fields, as well as state-wide geological maps, maps of other mineral resources in Wester Kentucky. [9] Jillson himself was a prolific writer on the subject of geology, and he had a policy of hiring geologists for fieldwork during the summer, rather than for permanent year-round work that might conflict with other commitments. [2]
To fund all of this work, the state of Kentucky allocated US$50,000(equivalent to $860,526 in 2023) in 1926, which was matched dollar-for-dollar by the United States Geological Survey. [10] By 1927 it was estimated that the State Geologist had published 8500 pages in 147 titles. [11]
As a result of conflicting politics, in 1932 the Kentucky Geological Survey was transferred to the University of Kentucky and renamed its Bureau of Mineral and Topographic Survey, and Jillson's appointment was terminated, replacing him with Arthur C. McFarlan as State Geologist. [2] This lasted barely 2 years, with McFarlan replaced by Daniel J. Jones in 1934 and the Survey was reorganized again as a subdivision of the Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals. [2]
It was transferred to the University of Kentucky a second time in 1948, becoming a research bureau within the university's Department of Geology, still with Jones as State Geologist but now with McFarlan again as the Director of the Bureau. [2]
Jones retired in 1958, and the Bureau was divorced from the Department of Geology that year just beforehand, with Wallace W. Hagan becoming both State Geologist and Director. [2] Hagan in turn retired in 1978 to be followed by Donald C. Haney. [2]
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The California Geological Survey, previously known as the California Division of Mines and Geology, is the California state geologic agency.
The Geological Survey of India (GSI) is a scientific agency of India. It was founded in 1851, as a Government of India organization under the Ministry of Mines, one of the oldest of such organisations in the world and the second oldest survey in India after the Survey of India, for conducting geological surveys and studies of India, and also as the prime provider of basic earth science information to government, industry and general public, as well as the official participant in steel, coal, metals, cement, power industries and international geoscientific forums.
Geoscience Australia is an agency of the Australian Government. It carries out geoscientific research. The agency is the government's technical adviser on all aspects of geoscience, and custodian of the geographic and geological data and knowledge of the nation.
The China Geological Survey (CGS) (Chinese: 中国地质调查局) is a government-owned, not-for-profit, Chinese organization researching China's mineral resources. It is a public institution managed by the State Council's ministries and commissions responsible for geological and mineral exploration under the State Council of the People's Republic of China. According to the national land and resources survey plan, it is now managed by the Ministry of Natural Resources. It is the largest Geoscience agency in China since being reinstated in 1999, and the headquarter is in Beijing, the capital of China.
The Utah Geological Survey is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It also has an office in Cedar City, Utah.
Sir Aubrey Strahan KBE FRS was a British geologist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1903. He was Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain from 1914–1920. He won the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1919.
The early concepts of soil were based on ideas developed by a German chemist, Justus von Liebig (1803–1873), and modified and refined by agricultural scientists who worked on samples of soil in laboratories, greenhouses, and on small field plots. The soils were rarely examined below the depth of normal tillage. These chemists held the "balance-sheet" theory of plant nutrition. Soil was considered a more or less static storage bin for plant nutrients—the soils could be used and replaced. This concept still has value when applied within the framework of modern soil science, although a useful understanding of soils goes beyond the removal of nutrients from soil by harvested crops and their return in manure, lime, and fertilizer.
The Arizona Geological Survey (AZGS) was established by the Arizona Legislature to investigate and describe Arizona's geology and to educate and inform the public regarding its geologic setting. Each year since 1915, AZGS has released geologic maps, formal reports, and other geology-related publications. In Tucson, the Survey maintains a geological library comprising more than 15,000 volumes and approximately 100 linear feet of mine files that include newspaper clippings, maps, mine schematics and mine reports; it also maintains a small core repository of donated rock core. In addition, AZGS archives well cuttings of more than 1,000 oil and gas wells on behalf of the Arizona Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The AZGS Phoenix branch maintains tens-of-thousands of mine maps and reports acquired in 2011 when the Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources merged with AZGS. The Survey main office is located in the State Office complex in downtown Tucson).
David Dale Owen was a prominent American geologist who conducted the first geological surveys of Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Owen served as the first state geologist for three states: Kentucky (1854–57), Arkansas (1857–59), and Indiana. His first geological work was as an assistant mapping the geology of Tennessee in 1836. In addition, Owen was appointed as a U.S. geologist in 1839 and led federal surveys of Iowa, Wisconsin, and northern Illinois (1839–40) and in the Upper Midwest (1847-1851). Owen's greatest legacy lies in the eleven volumes of published reports from his state and federal geological surveys, which increased the general knowledge and understanding of American geology, the structural geology and paleontology of the United States, and the mineral wealth of the Midwestern states. Owen's most significant contribution to the field of geology was identifying and naming major geological formations of the Mississippi River Valley and placing them in relative position on a geological timeline. He also helped to standardize the nomenclature of geological structures in the Midwest.
The Marcellus Formation or the Marcellus Shale is a Middle Devonian age unit of sedimentary rock found in eastern North America. Named for a distinctive outcrop near the village of Marcellus, New York, in the United States, it extends throughout much of the Appalachian Basin.
The Bedford Shale is a shale geologic formation in the states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia in the United States.
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, although backgrounds in physics, chemistry, biology, and other sciences are also useful. Field research is an important component of geology, although many subdisciplines incorporate laboratory and digitalized work. Geologists can be classified in a larger group of scientists, called geoscientists.
Geologic mapping of Georgia is the creation of geologic maps—special-purpose maps made to show geological features—of the State of Georgia in the United States. Rock units or geologic strata are shown by colors or symbols to indicate where they are exposed at the surface. Structural features such as faults and shear zones are also shown. Since the first national geological map, in 1809, there have been numerous maps which included the geology of Georgia. The first Georgia-specific geologic map was created in 1825. The most recent state-produced geologic map of Georgia, by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources is 1:500,000 scale, and was created in 1976 by the department's Georgia Geological Survey. It was generated from a base map produced by the United States Geological Survey. The state geologist and Director of the Geological Survey of Georgia was Sam M. Pickering, Jr. Since 1976, several geological maps of Georgia, featuring the state's five distinct geologic regions, have been produced by the federal government.
Ward is an unincorporated community in Sussex County, Delaware, United States. in the Little Creek Hundred.
The New Albany Shale is an organic-rich geologic formation of Devonian and Mississippian age in the Illinois Basin of the United States. It is a major source of hydrocarbons.
Philip Burke King was a geologist who worked for the United States Geological Survey. He was born in Chester, Indiana. King graduated from Iowa State University and Yale University. He spent most of his career from 1930 onward as a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He taught at universities for short periods:, Arizona (1929–30), UCLA (1954–56), and in the autumn of 1965 was a visiting lecturer at the University of Moscow.
John Robert Procter was an American geologist and civil service reformer. He was the Kentucky state geologist from 1880 to 1893, and president of the United States Civil Service Commission from 1893 to 1903.
Chetolah is a ghost town in Lookout Township of Ellis County, Kansas, United States.
The Cleveland Shale, also referred to as the Cleveland Member, is a shale geologic formation in the eastern United States.
Stuart Weller was an American paleontologist and geologist.
