Robert O Rye

United States Geological Survey, Lakewood CO · Crustal

Oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, and carbon isotopes have been analyzed in the Pea Ridge magnetite-apatite deposit, the largest historic producer among the known iron deposits in the southeast Missouri portion of the 1.5 to 1.3 Ga eastern granite-rhyolite province. The data were collected to investigate the sources of ore fluids, conditions of ore formati...

A synthesis of old and new paleoclimatic data from the Pyramid and Winnemucca lake basins indicates that, between 48.0 and 11.5·103 calibrated years BP (hereafter ka), the climate of the western Great Basin was, to a degree, linked with the climate of the North Atlantic. Paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV) records from Pyramid Lake core PLC08-1 w...

Ore formation at the Spar Lake red bed-associated strata-bound Cu deposit took place across a mixing and reaction zone between a hot oxidized metals-transporting brine and a reservoir of "sour" (H 2S-bearing) natural gas trapped in the host sandstones. Fluid inclusion volatile analyses have very high CH 4 concentrations (≥1 mol % in most samples),...

Supergene jarosite-group minerals are widespread in weathering profiles overlying Pb-Zn sulfide ores at Xitieshan, northern Tibetan Plateau, China. They consist predominantly of K-deficient natrojarosite, with lesser amounts of K-rich natrojarosite and plumbojarosite. Electron microprobe (EMP) analyses, scanning electron microcopy (SEM) investigati...

A sediment core taken from the western edge of the Bonneville Basin has provided high-resolution proxy records of relative lake-size change for the period 45.1–10.5 calendar ka (hereafter ka). Age control was provided by a paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV)-based age model for Blue Lake core BL04-4. Continuous records of δ¹⁸O and total inorganic...

Magnetotelluric traverses across the southern Yukon-Tanana terrane (YTT) reveal the presence of a thick conductive layer (or layers) beneath Paleozoic crystalline rocks. These rocks have been interpreted to be flysch of probable Mesozoic age, on the basis of the occurrence of Jurassic-Cretaceous flysch in the Kahiltna assemblage and Gravina-Nutzoti...

Brown bear (Ursus arctos) population size correlates with density of high-quality food resources. We report on a ten-year study (1993 - 2003) of brown bear nutritional ecology in southwestern Alaska during which changes in resource availability and density occurred. The diets of 21 female bears captured multiple years were characterized by stable i...

Wolves (Canis lupus) in North America are considered obligate predators of ungulates with other food resources playing little role in wolf population dynamics or wolf prey relations. However, spawning Pacific salmon (Oncorhyncus spp.) are common throughout wolf range in northwestern North America and may provide a marine subsidy affecting inland wo...

Late Devonian porphyry Cu-Au deposits within the Oyu Tolgoi mineral district, Mongolia, occur in a northnortheast-trending zone 22 km long. Theyare related to quartz monzodiorite intrusions, and hosted by augite basalt lavas. The porphyry systems have been preserved beneath overturned and allochthonous stratigraphic sequences and geologic relations...

The Boyongan and Bayugo porphyry copper-gold deposits are part of an emerging belt of intrusion-centered gold-rich deposits in the Surigao district of northeast Mindanao, Philippines. Exhumation and weathering of these Late Pliocene-age deposits has led to the development of the world's deepest known porphyry oxidation profile at Boyongan (600 m),...

Stable isotope analyses have revolutionized the study of migratory connectivity. However, as with all tools, their limitations must, be understood in order to derive the maximum benefit of a particular application. The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of stable isotopes of C, N, H, O and S for assigning known-origin feathers to the m...

Sulfur- and oxygen-isotope analyses have been obtained for sediment-hosted stratiform barite deposits in Alaska, Nevada, Mexico, and China to examine the environment of formation of this deposit type. The barite is contained in sedimentary sequences as old as Late Neoproterozoic and as young as Mississippian. If previously published data for other...

CRISM spectral data collected over an unnamed 70-km-diameter impact crater in the Noachian-age southern highlands of Terra Sirenum (30°S, 158°W), Mars, indicate the presence of the acid-sulfate mineral alunite [KAl3(SO4)2(OH)6], based on diagnostic absorptions at NIR wavelengths. The USGS Tetracorder spectral shape-matching system was used to creat...

Hydrothermal alteration at Mount Rainier waxed and waned over the 500,000-year episodic growth of the edifice. Hydrothermal minerals and their stable-isotope compositions in samples collected from outcrop and as clasts from Holocene debris-flow deposits identify three distinct hypogene argillic/advanced argillic hydrothermal environments: magmatic-...

Analyses have been made of 81 effluents from four gold leach operations in various stages of remediation to identify the most -persistent cyanide species. Total cyanide and weak acid-dissociable (WAD) cyanide were measured using improved methods, and metals known to form stable cyanocomplexes were also measured. Typically, total cyanide greatly exc...

Knowledge of diettissue stable isotope discrimination is required to properly interpret stable isotope values and to identify possible diet shifts, such as might be expected from nursing through weaning. This study compared ¹³C and ¹⁵f paired serum and vibrissal roots with those of ingested milk (n = 52) from free-ranging Steller sea lion (Eumetopi...

This report documents water quality in Camp Far West Reservoir from October 2001 through August 2003. The reservoir, located at approximately 300 feet above sea level in the foothills of the northwestern Sierra Nevada, California, is a monomictic lake characterized by extreme drawdown in the late summer and fall. Thermal stratification in summer an...

Table S1. Water-quality data for well GS-18, Penn Mine, California, 2001–02; Table S2. Statistical data for replicate water-quality samples, well GS-18, Penn Mine, California, 2002; Table S3. Quality assurance data for standard reference water samples.

Quality assurance and quality control for water analyses; image collected using down-hole camera during sampling of the Penn mine workings.

Detailed fluid geochemistry studies on hydrothermal quartz veins from the Rouyn-Noranda and Val-d'Or areas along the transcrustal Cadillac Tectonic Zone (CTZ) indicate that unmineralized (with respect to gold) sections of the CTZ contained a distinct CO2-dominated, H2S-poor hydrothermal fluid. In contrast, both gold mineralized sections of the CTZ...

Sediments recovered from the flooded mine workings of the Penn Mine, a Cu-Zn mine abandoned since the early 1960s, were cultured for anaerobic bacteria over a range of pH (4.0 to 7.5). The molecular biology of sediments and cultures was studied to determine whether sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) were active in moderately acidic conditions present...

Reconnaissance investigations have been conducted to identify how geochemical techniques can be applied to biological studies to assist wildlife management in and near Yellowstone National Park (the Park). Many elements (for example, As, B, Be, Ce, Cl, Cs, F, Hg, K, Li, Mo, Rb, S, Sb, Si, and W) are commonly enriched in (1) thermal waters in the Ye...

The combined results from major-ion chemistry and sulfur isotopes show three dominant processes affecting water quality: gypsum and anhydrite dissolution, pyrite oxidation, and calcite dissolution. This conclusion is based on more than one hundred samples including water, pyrite, gypsum, and anhydrite, collected in the Animas River watershed study...

The extraordinary number, size, and unspoiled beauty of the geysers and hot springs of Yellowstone National Park (the Park) make them a national treasure. The hydrology of these special features and their relation to cold waters of the Yellowstone area are poorly known. In the absence of deep drill holes, such information is available only indirect...

Previous studies have demonstrated that the replacement alunite deposits just north of the town of Marvsvale, Utah, USA, were formed primarily by low-temperature (100 degrees-170 degrees C), steam-heated processes near the early Miocene paleoground surface, immediately above convecting hydrothermal plumes. Pyrite-bearing propylitically altered rock...

The Oyu Tolgoi porphyry Cu-Au system in the South Gobi desert, Mongolia, comprises five deposits that extend over 6 km in a north-northeast–oriented zone. They occur in a middle to late Paleozoic arc terrane and are related to Late Devonian quartz monzodiorite intrusions. The Hugo Dummett deposits are the northernmost and deepest, with up to 1,000...

Mount Rainier is the result of episodic stages of edifice growth during periods of high eruptive activity and edifice destruction during periods of relative magmatic quiescence over the past 500 kyr. Edifice destruction occurred both by slow erosion and by catastrophic collapses, some of which were strongly influenced by hydrothermal alteration. Se...

We used feathers of known origin collected from across the breeding range of a migratory shorebird to test the use of isotope tracers for assigning breeding origins. We analyzed deltaD, delta13C, and delta15N in feathers from 75 mountain plover (Charadrius montanus) chicks sampled in 2001 and from 119 chicks sampled in 2002. We estimated parameters...

To better understand the transfer of nutrients into prairie wetland food webs we have investigated the cycling of S (via S isotope systematics and geochemistry) in a prairie wetland landscape by characterizing sources (ground water, interstitial water, surface water) and processes in a small catchment comprised of four wetlands in eastern South Dak...

Big Rock Candy Mountain is a prominent center of variegated altered volcanic rocks in west-central Utah. It consists of the eroded remnants of a hypogene alunite deposit that, at ∼21 Ma, replaced intermediate-composition lava flows. The alunite formed in steam-heated conditions above the upwelling limb of a convection cell that was one of at least...

Typical porphyry-type Cu–Mo mineralization occupies two connected domal centers, the eastern Pittsmont and western Anaconda domes, that predate and largely underlie the well-known, throughgoing, Main Stage polymetallic veins of Butte. Among the sulfur-bearing minerals recovered from deep drill core of this early pre-Main Stage hydrothermal assembla...

Sulfate minerals in altered rocks on the upper flanks and summits of active andesitic stratovolcanoes result from multiple processes. The origin of these sulfates at five active volcanoes, Citlaltépetl (Mexico), and Mount Adams, Hood, Rainier, and Shasta (Cascade Range, USA), was investigated using field observations, petrography, mineralogy, chemi...

As many as 29 mining districts along the Rio Grande Rift in southern New Mexico contain Rio Grande Rift-type (RGR) deposits consisting of fluorite–barite±sulfide–jarosite, and additional RGR deposits occur to the south in the Basin and Range province near Chihuahua, Mexico. Jarosite occurs in many of these deposits as a late-stage hydrothermal mine...

The Tambo high-sulfidation deposit, located within the El Indio–Pascua belt in Chile, produced almost 25 t (0.8 M oz) of gold from altered Tertiary rhyodacitic volcanic rocks. Episodic magmatic-hydrothermal activity in the district occurred over at least 4 my and is characterized by several stages of acid-sulfate alteration, including magmatic-hydr...

The Brazilian Tapajós gold province contains the first evidence of high-sulfidation gold mineralization in the Amazonian Craton. The mineralization appears to be in large nested calderas. The Tapajós–Parima (or Ventuari–Tapajós) geological province consists of a metamorphic, igneous, and sedimentary sequence formed during a 2.10 to 1.87 Ga ocean−co...

The Pierina high-sulfidation Au–Ag deposit formed 14.5 my ago in rhyolite ash flow tuffs that overlie porphyritic andesite and dacite lavas and are adjacent to a crosscutting and interfingering dacite flow dome complex. The distribution of alteration zones indicates that fluid flow in the lavas was largely confined to structures but was dispersed l...

The stable-isotope geochemistry of sulfate minerals that form principally in I-type igneous rocks and in the various related hydrothermal systems that develop from their magmas and evolved fluids is reviewed with respect to the degree of approach to isotope equilibrium between minerals and their parental aqueous species. Examples illustrate classic...

Chemical and isotope data were obtained for the active gas and noble gas of inclusion fluids in coarse-grained samples of magmatic-hydrothermal and magmatic-steam alunite from well-studied deposits (Marysvale, Utah; Tambo, Chile; Tapajós, Brazil; Cactus, California; Pierina, Peru), most of which are discussed in this Volume. Primary fluid inclusion...

The Summitville Au–Ag–Cu deposit is a classic volcanic dome-hosted high-sulfidation deposit. It occurs in the Quartz Latite of South Mountain, a composite volcanic dome that was emplaced along the coincident margins of the Platoro and Summitville calderas at 22.5±0.5 Ma, penecontemporaneous with alteration and mineralization. A penecontemporaneous...

The Pascua-Lama high-sulfidation system, located in the El Indio-Pascua belt of Chile and Argentina, contains over 16 million ounces (Moz) Au and 585 Moz Ag. The deposit is hosted primarily in granite rocks of Triassic age with mineralization occurring in several discrete Miocene-age phreatomagmatic breccias and related fracture networks. The large...

Although hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus) are presumed to be migratory and capable of long-distance dispersal, traditional marking techniques have failed to provide direct evidence of migratory movements by individuals. We measured the stable hydrogen isotope ratios of bat hair (dD h) and determined how these values relate to stable hydrogen isotope...

The thermal history of the Oquirrh Mountains, Utah, indicates that hydrothermal fluids associated with emplacement of the 37 Ma Bingham Canyon porphyry Cu-Au-Mo deposit extended at least 10 km north of the Bingham pit. An associated paleothermal anomaly enclosed the Barneys Canyon and Melco disseminated gold deposits and several smaller gold deposi...

Spawning cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki (Richardson, 1836)) are a potentially important food resource for grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis Ord, 1815) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We developed a method to estimate the amount of cutthroat trout ingested by grizzly bears living in the Yellowstone Lake area. The method utilized (i)...

We evaluated the potential use of stable isotopes to establish linkages between the wintering grounds and the breeding grounds of the Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos), the White-rumped Sandpiper (Calidris fuscicollis), the Baird's Sandpiper (Calidris bairdii), and other Neotropical migratory shorebird species (e.g., Tringa spp.). These speci...

White-tailed kite (Elanus leucurus) populations in the 1930s were close to extirpation in the United States. But by the 1940s, an upward trend towards recovery was apparent and continued to their current stable population levels. These dramatic fluctuations in kite numbers may have been related to changes in rodent prey populations due to the conve...

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a masting species that produces relatively large, fat- and protein-rich nuts that are consumed by grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis). Trees produce abundant nut crops in some years and poor crops in other years. Grizzly bear survival in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is strongly linked to variation in pi...

In drainage from an inactive ore heap at a former gold mine, the speciation of cyanide and the concentrations of several metals were found to follow diurnal cycles. Concentrations of the hexacyanoferrate complex, iron, manganese, and ammonium were higher at night than during the day, whereas weak-acid-dissociable cyanide, silver, gold, copper, nitr...

Continuous, high-resolution δ18O records from cored sediments of Pyramid Lake, Nevada, indicate that oscillations in the hydrologic balance occurred, on average, about every 150 years (yr) during the past 7630 calendar years (cal yr). The records are not stationary; during the past 2740 yr, drought durations ranged from 20 to 100 yr and intervals b...

Sulfur isotopes have received little attention in ecology studies because plant and animal materials typically have low sulfur concentrations (< 1 wt.%) necessitating labor-intensive chemical extraction prior to analysis. To address the potential of direct combustion of organic material in an elemental analyzer coupled with a mass spectrometer, we...

Stable isotope methods have been used to identify the mechanisms responsible for cyanide consumption at three heap-leach operations that process Carlin-type gold ores in Nevada, U.S.A. The reagent cyanide had ?15N values ranging from -5 to -2‰ and ? 13C values from -60 to -35‰. The wide ?13C range reflects the use by different suppliers of isotopic...

The edifice of Mount Rainier, an active stratovolcano, has episodically collapsed leading to major debris flows. The largest debris flows are related to argillically altered rock which leave areas of the edifice prone to failure. The argillic alteration results from the neutralization of acidic magmatic gases that condense in a meteoric water hydro...

INTRODUCTION Stable isotope studies of sulfate minerals are especially useful for unraveling the geochemical history of geological systems. All sulfate minerals can yield sulfur and oxygen isotope data. Hydrous sulfate minerals, such as gypsum, also yield oxygen and hydrogen isotope data for the water of hydration, and more complex sulfate minerals...

K/Ar age determinations on supergene alunite and jarosite, formed during Neogene weathering of the epithermal silver and base-metal ores of the Creede mining district, have been combined with geologic evidence to estimate the timing of regional uplift of the southern Rocky Mountains and related canyon cutting. In addition, oxygen and hydrogen isoto...

At 25 Ma a major epithermal silver and base metal deposit formed in rhyolitic welded tuff near Creede, Colorado. Nearly 2400 metric tons of silver, appreciable lead, and small amounts of zinc, copper, and gold, have been produced from large, crustified veins under Bachelor and Bulldog Mountains north and northwest of Creede. Prior geologic, hydrolo...

The lacustrine carbonate and travertine (tufa) deposits of ancient Lake Creede preserve a remarkable record of the isotopic evolution of the lake. That record indicates that the δ18O of the lake water, and by analogy its salinity, evolved through evaporation. Limited and less reliable data on hydrous minerals and fluid inclusions in early diageneti...

Sulfur isotope analysis of authigenic pyrite in the Creede Formation documents its precipitation by the reaction between iron in the volcaniclastic sediments and H2S formed through bacteriogenic reduction of sulfate added to the lake during and immediately following repeated volcanic eruptions during sedimentation. Pyrite veinlets in the underlying...

Carlin-type gold deposits are difficult to date and a wide range of ages has been reported for individual deposits. Therefore, several methods were employed to constrain the age of the gold deposits in the Jerritt Canyon district. Dated igneous rocks with well-documented crosscutting relationships to ore provided the most reliable constraints. K/Ar...

Laboratory infrared spectroscopy measurements have been used to examine the D/H ratios in kaolinites.

Uranium deposits containing molybdenum and fluorite occur in the Central Mining Area, near Marysvale, Utah, and formed in an epithermal vein system that is part of a volcanic/hypabyssal complex. They represent a known, but uncommon, type of deposit; relative to other commonly described volcanic-related uranium deposits, they are young, well-exposed...

ABSTRACT Anunderstanding of ,the fate of cyanide ,(CN ,C air CO2 has been important in many barren and pregnant solutions. However, DIC in reclaim pond

The Crofoot-Lewis deposit is an adularia-sericite-type (low-sulfidation) epithermal Au-Ag deposit, whose well-preserved paleosurface includes abundant opaline sinters, widespread and intense silicification, bedded hydrothermal eruption breccias, and a large zone of acid sulfate alteration. Radiogenic isotope ages indicate that the system was relati...

Sediment grain size, carbonate content, and stable isotopes in 70-cm-long (∼1500-yr) channel samples from Owens Lake core OL-92 record many oscillations representing climate change in the eastern Sierra Nevada region since 155,000 yr B.P. To first order, the records match well the marine δ18O record. At Owens Lake, however, the last interglaciation...

Oxygen isotope and total inorganic carbon values of cored sediments from the Owens Lake basin, California, indicate that Owens Lake overflowed most of the time between 52,500 and 12,500 carbon-14 (14C) years before present (B.P.). Owens Lake desiccated during or after Heinrich event H1 and was hydrologically closed during Heinrich event H2. The mag...

Cerro Rico de Potosi, Bolivia, is the world's largest silver deposit and has been mined since the sixteenth century for silver, and for tin and zinc during the twentieth century, together with by-product copper and lead. The deposit consists primarily of veins that cut an altered igneous body that we interpret to be a dacitic volcanic dome and its...

In this paper, the fundamental importance of changes in hydrologic balance and hydrologic state on the δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C values of water and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in lakes of the Lahontan basin is illustrated. Abrupt changes in δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C values of carbonate deposits (tufas) from the Pyramid Lake subbasin, Nevada, coincide with abrupt cha...

Cerro Rico de Potosi, Bolivia, is the world's largest silver deposit and has been mined since the sixteenth century for silver, and for tin and zinc during the twentieth century, together with by-product copper and lead. The deposit consists primarily of veins that cut an altered igneous body that we interpret to be a dacitic volcanic dome and its...

Stable isotope studies of alunite have added a powerful tool for understanding geochemical processes in the surficial environment. Jarosite [KFe 3(SO 4) 2(OH) 6], like alunite, is a common mineral in the weathered portions of many sulfide-bearing ore deposits and mine drainages where its formation reflects acidic conditions produced by the oxidatio...

The Julcani district consists of at least six mineralized centers in a 16-km 2 late Miocene, dacitic to rhyolitic dome complex that is built on a ~3000-m-thick Paleozoic-Mesozoic clastic sedimentary section. Mineralization occurred within 0.5 m.y. of the youngest dome formation and was prior to emplacement of an anhydrite-bearing dacite dike. The o...

Rates of alkali exchange between alunite and water have been measured in hydrothermal experiments of 1 hour to 259 days duration at 150 to 400°C. Examination of run products by scanning electron microscope indicates that the reaction takes place by dissolution-reprecipitation. This exchange is modeled with an empirical rate equation which assumes a...

We have determined oxygen and hydrogen isotope fractionation factors between alunite and water over a temperature range of 250–450°C by reacting synthetic natroalunite with 0.7 m K2SO4 −0.1 to 0.65 m H2SO4 solutions to produce K-rich alunite. From 88 to 95% alkali and isotope exchange were observed in most of these experiments, and the partial equi...

Isotopic studies of fluid inclusions from meteoric water-dominated epithermal ore deposits offer a unique opportunity to study paleoclimates because the fluids can provide direct samples of ancient waters. The oxygen and hydrogen isotope compositions of meteoric waters vary because of changes in climatic variables such as mean annual temperature of...