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The U.S. Geological Survey Energy Resources Program has developed coal databases to characterize the location, quantity, and physical attributes and chemistry of U.S. coal and coal-related deposits. The National Coal Resources Data System (NCRDS) database is an integrated system utilizing commercial software to produce maps, resource calculations, and coal quality location maps. NCRDS databases contain coal data from Federal and State agencies, universities, the private sector, and foreign countries. NCRDS is comprised of three major components - COALQUAL, USTRAT, and USCOAL:
Coal point-source and chemical data (COALQUAL) containing geodetic location, field observations, sample analyses, bed thickness; lithology; depth of burial, moisture, ash, and sulfur content, heat value, and major-, minor-trace-element contents.
A point-source stratigraphic database (USTRAT), which is supported by a federally-funded cooperative program with geological surveys and universities in 22 States. Some stratigraphic data are publicly available. Index of public points by state and county (Updated July 2008 -- spreadsheet format). Contact the USGS for a download of publicly available data. Plans to update the online availability of USTRAT are underway.
Coal distribution data (USCOAL) containing various published coal-resource estimates dating from 1940 to 1978. This historical database for coal-bearing States lists: State, county, coal field, geologic age, formation, rank, coal thickness, overburden thickness, and reliability of the published resource estimates. The summary resources total approximately to the estimates of Paul Averitt in USGS Bulletin 1412 -- Coal resources of the United States- January 1, 1974.
An assessment of the Powder River Basin has been recently completed and the data derived from the assessment is being released as Data Series 713. The Powder River Basin stratigraphic data is also being processed into the National Coal Resources Data System USTRAT database and will be available for download through the NCRDS database query tools in the near future. |