Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Heavy-Oil And Bitumen Resources Of The Big Clifty Sandstone, Northeastern Grayson County And Adjacent Hardin County, Kentucky, J. Richard Bowersox

Report of Investigations--KGS

Rock asphalt (bitumen-saturated sandstone) was produced from the Big Clifty Sandstone near Tar Hill and Big Clifty in northeastern Grayson County, and at Summit in adjacent Hardin County, from 1889 to 1940. Noncommercial amounts of oil were distilled from Big Clifty rock asphalt before 1930. Resource assessments conducted throughout the area during the mid-1920's described substantial rock-asphalt deposits. Later assessments in 1951, 1965, and the early 1980's, however, overlooked the northeastern Grayson County area. A new evaluation in 2015 estimated that the historically developed area between Clifty Creek and meeting Creek, and between the Summit Fault and Eveleigh Fault Zone, …

Heavy-Oil And Bitumen Resources Of The Western Kentucky Tar Sands, J. Richard Bowersox

Report of Investigations--KGS

Heavy-oil and bitumen resources in western Kentucky are present in the Upper Mississippian Big Clifty and Hardinsburg Sandstones and Lower Pennsylvanian Kyrock and Bee Spring Sandstone Members of the Caseyville Formation in a belt extending from Logan County on the south to Breckinridge and Hardin Counties on the north.

Net oil-saturated intervals in the tar sands range from 2.5 to 4.7 m thick, largely in downthrown fault blocks in and bounding the Rough Creek Graben. Records from 1,500 wells, analysis of reservoir properties from 3,769 plugs from 135 coreholes, and bulk volume of hydrocarbon calculated in 139 surface samples were …

Earthquake Hazard Mitigation In The New Madrid Seismic Zone: Science And Public Policy, Alice M. Orton, Zhenming Wang, Lanmin Wang, Edward W. Woolery

Report of Investigations--KGS

In the central United States, earthquake sources that are not well defined, long earthquake recurrence intervals, and uncertain ground-motion attenuation models have contributed to an overstatement of seismic hazard for the New Madrid Seismic Zone on the national seismic hazard maps published by the U.S. Geological Survey. A series of informal interviews in western Kentucky with local businesspersons, public officials, and other professionals in occupations associated with seismic-hazard mitigation discussed seismic-mitigation policies in relation to depressed local economy. Scientific and relative economic analysis was then performed using scenario earthquake models developed with the Federal Emergency management Agency's Hazus-MH software. The …

Site Characteristics, Instrumentation, And Recordings Of The Central United States Seismic Observatory, Edward W. Woolery, Zhenming Wang, N. Seth Carpenter

Report of Investigations--KGS

The Central United States Seismic Observatory is a vertical seismic array in southwestern Kentucky within the New Madrid Seismic Zone. It is intended to record the effects of local geology, including thick sediment overburden, on seismic-wave propagation, particularly strong ground motion. The three-borehole array is composed of seismic sensors placed on the surface, in the bedrock, and at various depths within the 585-m-thick sediment overburden. The array's deep borehole also provides a unique opportunity to describe the geology and geophysically measure the complete Late Cretaceous through Quaternary stratigraphy in the northern Mississippi Embayment.

Based on the surface and borehole geophysical …