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Geology News
Kentucky Current Events

The Sierra Club is not satisfied with the environmental protection measures of coal-fired power plants in seven states. The Club’s most recent effort targets plants in Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Missouri and Wyoming for failing to include adequate pollution controls for mercury and other toxics.

“A major wintertime tornado outbreak ripped through Arkansas, western Tennessee, northern Mississippi, northern Alabama, and western Kentucky on February 5, 2008.” Earth Observatory has a precipitation map for the storms and details on why they happened.

Dozens of people have been killed by tornadoes that ripped across Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Alabama late Tuesday.

USGS Image

Cave extremeophiles (microbes that live in very difficult environments) have been the object of Hazel Barton’s research for a long time. Barton, a professor of microbiology at Northern Kentucky University has visited more than 1000 caves in the United States, Britain, Greenland, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Venezuela, Greece, and New Zealand to study these organisms.

USGS Image

USGS has completed an assessment of the undiscovered oil and gas potential of the Illinois Basin which includes parts of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee. The assessment is based on the geologic elements of each total petroleum system defined in the basin and includes: hydrocarbon source rocks, reservoir rocks, and hydrocarbon traps.

KGS Image

The Kentucky Geological Survey has published generalized geologic maps for 92 counties and has 22 more in progress. These maps are being prepared with land-use planning in mind. One sentence from their website: “The maps provide information on how the underlying rock in an area affects excavation and foundations, on-site wastewater treatment systems, residential and industrial developments, highway and street development, and pond and reservoir construction.” The maps are available on their website as PDF documents.

Stay Out of Abandoned Mines!

An average of 30 people per year die in abandoned mines. Causes of death include: drownings, falls, asphyxiation, ATV accidents and being shot by a security guard. Pennsylvania leads the nation in abandoned mine deaths for 2000 - 2006. Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky each had ten or more deaths in that time interval. Contact information is provided so that you can report dangerous abandoned mines in your area.