Igneous Intrusions Within The Raton Basin Sierra Grande

The west coast of North America has been tectonically and volcanically active for billions of years. The Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California were born of volcanoes, and magma has been erupting in the Long Valley to the east of the mountains for over three million years (Bailey, et. al., 1989). However, the climactic eruption of the region occurred relatively recently in the region's geologic history. About 760,000 years ago, a huge explosion of magma warped the Eastern Sierra into the landscape that exists today. The eruption depleted a massive magma chamber below the earth's surface so that the ceiling of the chamber imploded, forming what is now known as

Tour guide Cheri Chantz provided a background on how coal and the mine itself were formed. The Coteau Freedom Mine was formed over 50-60 million years ago. It takes approximately ten feet of vegetation under heat and pressure forms approximately one foot worth of coal. The type of coal found at the Coteau Freedom Mine was lignite coal, which is a low quality form of coal. Lignite coal has lower energy content or BTU compared to other forms of coal due to the decrease in the amount of carbon present in the coal and an increase in impurities and water content. In fact, lignite coal is nearly one-third water.

Clean coal technology usually addresses atmospheric problems resulting from burning coal. Historically, the primary focus was on sulfur dioxide and particulates, since it is the most important gas in the causation of acid rain. More recent focus has been on carbon dioxide (due to its impact on global warming) as well as other pollutants. Concerns exist regarding the economic viability of these technologies and the timeframe of delivery, potentially high hidden economic costs in terms of social and environmental damage, and the costs and viability of disposing of removed carbon and other toxic matter. More, the byproducts of coal power production range from fly ash sludge ponds full of mercury, arsenic, and sulfur in unlined ponds that can leak into the water supply.

Coal is a sedimentary material the amount of pyrite in coal is related to the amount of disposal organic material that was compressed and formed

The well tested in this project is located in the city of Brighton in Weld County, CO. Well SHABLE AB11-04P which is operated by Halliburton is one of the many wells in the Wattenberg field. Wattenberg field is a low permeability (“tight”) basin center gas field (Highley 12).Based from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 1999, the Wattenberg field has approximately produced 1.75 TCFG, 76.4 MMBO, and 15.7 MMBW from all of the formation above. The primary source of hydrocarbon production in the Wattenberg field comes from the Muddy (“J”) Sandstone formation which currently has 1,900 producing wells. The Wattenberg formation also has a potential biogenic gas reserves for coalbed methane (CBM) production at the Laramie formation

Oil and Gas exploration has been an ongoing project in the Raton Basin, but a quite unsuccessful one at best. The Raton Basin is primarily a flood plain paludal deposit which is not ordinarily an ideal unit to recover oil or gas from (Speer, 1976). The sandstones within the Raton are predominantly coarse grained, poorly sorted, fluvial sandstones which have been shown

The Blue Ridge Mountains sit within a larger tectonic area that includes part of the smoky mountains and Appalachian mountain chain. The Blue Ridge Mountains sit upon a large thrust plate area that has experienced repeated movement in the orogeny process as the Appalachians were built. This process occurred during the Proterozoic to the Paleozoic period (Tectonic Setting of the Southern Appalachians). Evidence of the faulting includes sedimentary zones at the end of the thrust. Within the thrust areas is high-grade metamorphic rocks and some igneous rocks from intrusion during collision events (Hatcher, R). Evidence of the intrusions are the dikes which can be seen and the large granite facies throughout the area (Grant, Willard).

Located in the western United States, the Powder River Basin is currently the United States largest producer of coal, and the coal that is produced here is some of the cleanest coal that is used in coal burning power plants. By producing such large quantities of low sulfur, clean burning coal, the Powder River Basin is of great interest, and we will examine the conditions and factors that helped to form some of the largest and cleanest coal seams in the world, along with coal production and other coal bed resources.

These deaths and injuries called for better safety for all working and many well-organized methods of getting rid of the gasses with flames and creating paths for water to leave the mines were thought up for more efficient coal mining. Inventions such as giant vacuums were used to rid of flooding water and one-man tunnels used for both mining and creating paths for water to go into a nearby river. Without a doubt coal mining was the most dangerous job in the early part of its life, killing around 1/3 of workers and causing permanent damage to bones and brains to around 60% of actual miners.

It located north by the La Bajada fault, which defines the southern margin of the Espanola basin, and to the south by the Socorro constriction. Volcanism in the Rio Grande rift is distributed through the Albuquerque basin and the Albuquerque volcanoes are only one among several young volcanic features near Albuquerque. The composition of the area is low silica basalt and andesitic but in the center is more silicic. This tells us that volcanism is a minor and only manifests itself in a few places in the current rift valley floor. Cat Hill volcanic fields are the youngest volcanic field in the Albuquerque The basin that was dated at 140,000. This field was built initially by several flows erupted from fissures. Cat Hills is basaltic monogenetic volcanic fields are composed of a series of small volcanoes that are formed in a single volcanic event. Basaltic volcanic fields can also form on the flanks of composite or large shield volcanoes within calderas and within rift zones. Over periods of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, a basaltic volcanic activity can create extensive volcanic fields consisting of multiple individual volcanoes. Volcanic fields are studied to help make accurate geologic maps, petrologic investigations, and date volcanoes. In the Rio Grande rift, there are a series of basaltic volcanic fields and Cat Hills is one of

Miners would dig and blast into the hillside, creating tunnels with heavy timber. They would then use mules and later mining cars to extract the coal from the mines. Yet, there were times that methane gas would build up overnight in the mine shafts and the miners had no way of knowing if it was safe for them to return to the mines the next morning. To ensure their safety, they would send a mule down the mine shaft with an open flame. If there was an explosion or the mule to returned, the miners would know the

Miocene volcanic rocks that form the Timber Mountains and Oasis valley caldera complex border the basin to the north (Christiansen et al., 1977) and extend southward beneath the basin. Most of these volcanic rocks are silicic ignimbrites that are 9.5-16 Ma (Christiansen et al., 1977). These volcanic rocks are overlain by moderately to highly deformed siltstone, fanglomerates, tuff, and limestone that have been correlated to the Furnace Creek Formation of Death Valley (Hunt and Mabey, 1966; Naffe, 1973) which has been dated at 5.3 to 6.4 Ma (Fleck, 1970; Hay et al., 1986).

Coal (n): A combustible black or dark brown rock consisting mainly of carbonized plant matter, found mainly in underground deposits and widely used as fuel. This little rock is what keeps 39% of our nation running. 10% of that coal comes from stripping the Appalachian mountain range of her beautiful peaks in a process called strip mining- or, more popularly, Mountaintop Removal. Coal is considered a non-renewable energy resource, meaning once it’s depleted, it will not return for millions of years. Once it's gone, it's gone. These non-renewable sources are found deep underground. Coal needs to be mined out, either by machine or by manual labor. The use of and the process in which we procure coal is a detriment to both the environment and the people in said environment. It is dangerous to the workers within the mines, the flora and fauna around the sites, and the surrounding communities.

Rocks associated with the Viluy traps include dikes, sills, and layered basalt breccia, and are overlain by Late Devonian-Early Carboniferous sediments (Ricci et al., 2013). Previous analysis on dating the traps has proved difficult due to high rates of erosion and burial by Mesozoic sediments in the east and Siberian traps to the west (Kiselev et al., 2006). The current extent of the Viluy traps is 800 by 450 km (Gaiduk, 1987; Kiseleve et al., 2006) with a total thickness of sediments up to 9 km and a volume of about 300X103km3 (Kiselev et al., 2006). However, effects of erosion and burial through time have likely contributed to a decrease in volume with time, and initial volume likely reached one million cubic kilometers (Kiselev et al., 2006). Thus, this value is similar to other volcanic provinces which have been associated with major mass extinctions through time

Antelope Valley receives its coal directly from the neighboring Coteau Freedom Mine. The Kress haulers from the mine directly drop coal into conveyor that run coal both to Antelope Valley Station and Dakota Gasification Plant. Antelope Valley Station takes the smaller chunks of lignite and crushes them down even further. This coal is then transferred using conveyors into the coal silos inside the plant. From here gravity forces the coal down into a pulverizing chamber. Once pulverized, air forces the coal into the boiler.