U.S. Geological Survey
National Coal Resources Data System
U.S. Coal Resource Databases
USCOAL and NEWCOAL
The location, quantity, and physical and chemical characteristics of U.S. coal and coal-related deposits have been entered into databases developed by the U.S. Geological Survey. The National Coal Resources Data System (NCRDS) databases consist of two primary components: (1) areally-located data (USCOAL and NEWCOAL) that contain published and other publicly available coal resource data on an areal basis, such as state, county, township, or coal field, and (2) spatially-located data (COALQUAL) which contains basic point source coal data (e.g., field observations, sample analyses) including geodetic location; bed thickness; lithology; depth of burial; moisture, ash, and sulfur content; heat value; and major-, minor-, and trace-element content. (COALQUAL can be accessed at http://lignite.er.usgs.gov/products/databases/CoalQual/intro.htm. NEWCOAL is not accessible at this time.)
The majority of source documents cited in USCOAL and NEWCOAL are those in USGS Bulletin 1412 Remaining Coal Resources of the United States as of January 1, 1974 (Averitt, 1975). The exceptions to this are instances wherein more recent detailed reports have been published or older, but more detailed reports by the same author or agency are available.
Resource estimates have been entered into the NCRDS databases as they are presented in the source document. Production data have not been incorporated to bring the resource estimate up to date. This means that if the source document provides an estimate of original resources, that estimate is entered into NCRDS, or if the resources in the source document are "remaining in the ground as of January 1, 1959," they are stored in NCRDS as "remaining as of January 1, 1959."
This coal resource inventory may be updated or modified as new data for geographic areas become available or as previously assessed areas are restudied, reevaluated, and reestimated.
Scope and Purpose
The scope of USCOAL and NEWCOAL, in terms of data elements, is an estimate of coal tonnage for a defined area (State, county, and sometimes map area) and contains published or publicly available information on coal field, district, province, region, formation, coal bed, rank of coal, thickness of coal, depth to coal (overburden), and reliability of data. Thickness and reliability are given in terms of the standard USGS Classification System (Wood and others, 1983). Other information includes identification of the source document from which the tonnage estimates were taken and the year of its publication; topographic quadrangle name; base year of the tonnage estimate; and geologic age by System and Series.
Information for the resource database is collected from different sources; therefore, terminology and reported categories differ widely. Reported thickness, overburden, and reliability categories may not match precisely the NCRDS categories [which follow USGS Circular 891, (Wood and others, 1983) guidelines]. In those instances, the tonnages have been entered into the NCRDS category most closely matching the source document category (e.g., coal tonnage reported as 12-24 inches thick was entered into the 14-28 inch NCRDS category; coal reported as 36 inch average thickness was entered into the 28-42 inch category). Tonnage numbers in the source documents have not been modified. To determine the actual category criteria used in the original report, the user should inspect the original source document cited with each tonnage number.
The USCOAL and NEWCOAL databases have not been updated since 1984
References Cited
Averitt, Paul, 1975, Coal resources of the United States, January 1, 1974: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1312, 131 p.
Barnes, F.F., 1961, Coal fields of the United States - Sheet 2, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey, scale 1:5,000.000.
Cargill, S.M., Olson, A.C., Medlin, A.L., and Carter, M.D., 1976, PACER-Data entry, retrieval, and update for the National Coal Resources Data System (Phase I): U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 978, 107 p.
MacLachlan, M.E., Bryant, W.A., Judkins, T.W., Koozmin, E.D., Orndorff, R.C., Hubert, M.L., Murdock, C.R., Starratt, S.W., LeCompte, J.R., and Abston, C.C., 1992, Stratigraphic nomenclature databases for the United States, its possessions and territories: U.S. Geological Survey Digital Data Series DDS-6.
Meyer, R.F., 1070, Geologic provinces code map for computer use: American Association of Petroleum Geologist Bulletin, v. 54, n. 7, p. 1301-1305.
Trumbull, J.B.A., 1960, Coal Fields of the United States, exclusive of Alaska - Sheet 1: U.S. Geological Survey, scale 1:1,500,000.
U.S. Bureau of Mines, 1974, The Bureau of Mines Minerals Availability System and resource classification manual: U.S. Bureau of Mines Information Circular 8654, 199 p.
Wood, G.H., Jr., Kehn, T.M., Carter, M.D., and Cultertson, W.C., 1983, Coal resource classification system of the U.S. Geological Survey: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 891, 65 p.
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Last updated 01 April 2004