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We report a quantitative analysis of regional differences in the the oxygen isotope composition of river water and precipitation across the USA because data are now available to undertake a more geographically and temporally extensive analysis than was formerly possible. Maps of modern, mean annual?? 18 O values for both precipitation (?? 18 O PPT) and river water (?? 18 O RIV) across the 48 contiguous states of the USA have been generated using latitude and elevation as the primary predictors of stable isotope composition while also incorporating regional and local deviations based on available isotopic data. The difference between these two maps was calculated to determine regions where?? 18 O RIV is significantly offset from local?? 18 O PPT . Additional maps depicting seasonal and extreme values for?? 18 O RIV and?? 18 O PPT were also constructed. This exercise confirms the presence of regions characterized by differences in?? 18 O RIV and?? 18 O PPT and specifically identifies the magnitude and regional extent of these offsets. In particular, the Great Plains has?? 18 O RIV values that are more positive than precipitation, while much of the western USA is characterized by significantly lower?? 18 O RIV values in comparison with local?? 18 O PPT . The most salient feature that emerged from this comparison is the???catchment effect??? for the rivers. Because river water is largely derived from precipitation that fell upstream of the sample locality (i.e. at higher elevations)?? 18 O RIV values are often lower than local?? 18 O PPT values, particularly in catchments with high-elevation gradients. Seasonal patterns in the isotopic data substantiate the generally accepted notion that amplitudes of?? 18 O variation are greatly dampened in river water relative to those of local precipitation. Copyright?? 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We have analyzed a suite of seventy-four formation-water samples from Mississippian and Pennsylvanian carbonate and siliciclastic strata in the Illinois basin for major, minor, and trace element concentrations and for strontium isotopic composition. A subset of these samples was also analyzed for boron isotopic composition. Data are used to interpret origin of salinity and chemical and Sr isotopic evolution of the brines and in comparison with a similar data set from an earlier study of basin formation waters from Silurian-Devonian reservoirs. Systematics of Cl-Br-Na show that present Mississippian-Pennsylvanian brine salinity can be explained by a combination of subaerial seawater evaporation short of halite saturation and subsurface dissolution of halite from an evaporite zone in the middle Mississippian St. Louis Limestone, along with extensive dilution by mixing with meteoric waters. Additional diagenetic modifications in the subsurface interpreted from cation/Br ratios include K depletion through interaction with clay minerals, Ca enrichment, and Mg depletion by dolomitization, and Sr enrichment through CaCO3 recrystallization and dolomitization. Ste. Genevieve Limestone (middle Mississippian) formation waters show 87Sr/86Sr ratios in the range 0.70782-0.70900, whereas waters from the siliciclastic reservoirs are in the range 0.70900-0.71052. Inverse correlations between 87Sr/86Sr and B, Li, and Mg concentrations suggest that the brines acquired radiogenic 87Sr through interaction with siliciclastic minerals. Completely unsystematic relations between 87Sr/86Sr and 1/Sr are observed; Sr concentrations in Ste. Genevieve and Aux Vases (middle Mississippian) waters appear to be buffered by equilibrium with respect to SrSO4. Although there are many similarities in their origin and evolution, these formation waters are distinguished from Silurian-Devonian brines in the basin by elevated Cl/Br and Na/Br ratios and by unsystematic Sr isotope relationships. Thus waters

A new method based on Zn reagent for the quantitative conversion H2O to H2 for the hydrogen isotope analysis of hydrous minerals and whole rocks has been developed. Analyses by this method are of comparable accuracy and precision (~ 1[per mille sign]; 2O) to those of conventional extraction methods based on uranium reagent and is significantly simpler, faster and less expensive.

The metalliferous ore deposits of southwest England are associated with biotite-muscovite granites that intruded upper Paleozoic sediments and volcanic rocks at the end of the Hercynian Orogeny. The hydrothermal mineralization can be subdivided into four stages: 1. (1) exoskarns2. (2) high-temperature tin and tungsten oxide-bearing sheeted greisen bordered veins and Sn-bearing tourmaline veins and breccias3. (3) polymetallic quartz-tourmaline-chlorite-sulfide-fluorite-bearing fissure veins, which represent the main episode of economic mineralization4. (4) late-stage, low-temperature polymetallic fluorite veins. U-Pb dating of monazite and xenotime and 40Ar/39Ar dating of muscovite were used to determine emplacement ages and cooling times for individual plutons within the Cornubian batholith, as well as separate intrusive phases within the plutons. In addition, 40Ar/39Ar ages from hornblende and secondary muscovite and Sm-Nd isochron ages from fluorite were employed to determine the relationship between pluton emplacement and different stages of mineralization. The U-Pb ages indicate that granite magmatism was protracted from ~300 Ma down to ~275 Ma with no evidence of a major hiatus. There is no systematic relation between the age of a pluton and its location within the batholith. The U-Pb ages for separate granite phases within a single pluton are resolvable and indicate that magma emplacement within individual plutons occurred over periods of as much as 4.5 myrs. Felsic porphyry dike emplacement was coeval with plutonism, but continued to ~270 Ma. The geochronologic data suggest that the Cornubian batholith originated from repeated melting events over 30 myrs and was formed by a series of small coalescing granitic bodies. Cooling rates of the main plutons are unrelated to emplacement age, but decrease from the southwest to the northeast from ~210[deg]C myr-1 to ~60[deg]C myr-1 with a mean of 100[deg]C myr-1. These slow cooling rates appear to reflect the addition

We present a new gravity model for the lithosphere beneath the Kenya Rift Valley, the Mozambique Belt, and the Tanzania Craton in western Kenya and northeastern Tanzania. The Kenya Rift lies within the eastern branch of the extensive Cenozoic East African Rift System and has developed almost entirely in the Pan-African Mozambique Belt about 50 to 150 km east of the exposed margin of the Archean Tanzania Craton. The gravity field over western Kenya and northeastern Tanzania is characterized by a long-wavelength Bouguer anomaly. We propose that this anomaly has two components: 1. (1) a "rift" signature, deriving from a shallow rift basin, a lower crustal intrusion and a low-density zone in the mantle lithosphere localized beneath the rift axis2. (2) a "suture" signature, arising from a crustal root along the boundary between the Mozambique Belt and Tanzania Craton and higher density crust in the mobile belt above part of the crustal root. Two lines of reasoning support our interpretation: 1. (1) Recent geological studies of the Mozambique Belt in Kenya and Tanzania suggest that it is a continent-continent collision zone, and continent-continent collision zones worldwide commonly exhibit a characteristic gravity anomaly.2. (2) The long-wavelength Bouguer anomaly has at least two minima, one over the craton-mobile belt boundary, and one or more over the rift valley. Corroborative evidence for our interpretation of the gravity field is provided by recent seismic investigations.

We report Rb---Sr, Sm---Nd and mineralogical data for leached whole rock, 87Sr/86Sr from 0.708 to 0.711 in exchangeable sites. Leached authigenic illite from the 1200 m, independent of the duration of burial. The exchangeable Sr in the clay has remained an open system and has undergone isotopic exchange since that time. Minimum fluid/rock ratios of 0.2 to 2 are modeled from Sr isotopic data, consistent with rock-dominated, open system diagenesis. Leachates and residues of the 147Sm/144Nd (147Sm/144Nd as high as 0.188. This Sm/Nd fractionation, in conjunction with the preserved isotopic equilibrium may be useful for dating diagenesis and associated fluid-rock interaction in older rocks.

The intrinsic oxygen fugacity (IOF) of olivine separates from the Salta, Springwater, and Eagle Station pallasites was measured between 850 and 1150[deg]C using oxygen-specific solid zirconia electrolytes at 105 Pa. The experimental apparatus consisted of a double-opposed electrolyte configuration with a CO-CO2 gas-mix bridging atmosphere. Four initial IOF measurements on Salta olivines revealed the effects of grain size and cell memory on experimental results; experiments with an IW cell memory and fine grain size (log fO2), contains Fa12.5 and Fe90.5Ni9.0; Springwater, of intermediate redox state (~IW), contains Fa18.0 and Fe87.5Ni12.1; Eagle Station, the most oxidized sample (IW + 0.5 logfO2), contains Fa20.5 and Fe85.0Ni14.6. Electron microbeam characterization of the starting materials and run products from these experiments have shown that olivine is the only phase present. Thermodynamic calculations of redox equilibria involving equilibrium pallasite assemblages are in good agreement with our experimental results and provide a lower limit to pallasite redox stability; others involving disequilibrium assemblages, suggest that pallasites experienced localized, late-stage oxidation and reduction effects. Consideration of the redox buffer metal-olivine-orthopyroxene utilizing calculated Eucrite Parent Body (EPB) mantle phase compositions indicates that small redox gradients may have existed in the EPB. Such gradients may have produced strong compositional variation within the EPB. In addition, there is apparently significant redox heterogeneity in the source area of Eagle Station Trio (EST) pallasites and Bocaiuva iron meteorites.