Some of the richest helium-bearing gas in the world was produced in Arizona. Helium concentrations range from trace amounts up to ten percent in the Holbrook Basin and Four Corners. Both areas have good potential for additional discovery and production of helium. Includes metadata for the monthly, annual, and cumulative summary reports of oil, gas and helium production by Arizona drilling fields.

The purpose of this research project is to determine the origin of the materials used to construct the Black Hills Dam in order to restore the landscape to pre-dam conditions. The Black Hills Dam site is located in northern Scottsdale, Maricopa County, at 33.75° North, 111.80° West. The goals of this project are to characterize the surficial deposits and local geology of the dam site. This report presents our findings, interpretations and conclusions based on background research, a site visit to the dam site, and technical discussions with the City of Scottsdale engineer and planners.

This open-file report describes the carbon-sequestration potential at the site of the 1 Alpine-Federal geothermal test drill hole, which is located south of Springerville in central eastern Arizona near the New Mexico border. A previous report, Arizona Geological Survey (AZGS) Open-File Report OFR 94-1, version 2.0, describes the subsurface geology encountered in the 1 Alpine-Federal well in much more detail than this new report.

This document embraces two components. First, a Conservation Assessment describes the current status of the jaguar in the United States, and identifies and assesses risks to the jaguar in Arizona and New Mexico. The Assessment focuses the second component, the Conservation Strategy, on reducing or eliminating these threats in Arizona and New Mexico, which might allow for expansion of the range currently occupied by the Arizona subspecies, and thus contribute to promoting recovery of the species.
Information in this document comes primarily from the state level, an approach that considers regional variation and provides a complete habitat and species assessment.

In March 1997, the Arizona Game and Fish Department and New Mexico Department of Game and Fish entered into a Conservation Agreement with other state, local, and federal cooperators, with voluntary participation by many private individuals, to conserve the jaguar (Panthera onca) along borderlands of Arizona and New Mexico and to stimulate parallel efforts in Mexico. The agencies believed that if strong partnerships could be developed under this approach, it would be a significant step forward in bringing local governments, private landowners, and nongovernmental organizations directly into jaguar management.

The southwestern United States and Sonora, Mexico are the extreme northern limits of the jaguar’s (Panthera onca) range, which primarily extends from central Mexico south through Central and South America to northern Argentina. Recently, the jaguar ranged as far north as Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Over the last century, the jaguar’s range has been reduced to approximately 46% of its historic range due to hunting pressure and habitat loss. The greatest loss of occupied range has occurred in the southern United States, northern Mexico, northern Brazil, and southern Argentina. Since 1900, jaguars have been documented occasionally in the southwestern United States, but the number of sightings per decade has declined over the last 100 years with only 4 verified sightings between 1970 and 2000. The objectives of our analysis were twofold: (1) characterize potential jaguar habitat in Arizona from historic sighting records, and (2) create a statewide habitat suitability map.

This report details geothermal resource exploration done for Arizona Public Service and the U.S. Department of Energy in 2005 to evaluate the geothermal resources of the Clifton Hot Springs area in Greenlee County, eastern Arizona for electric power production. The intent of the evaluation was to determine the local geologic controls of the geothermal system and, using publicly available data and original mapping performed for this project, to recommend locations for Controlled Source Audiomagnetotelluric (CSAMT) cross sections. The results of the geophysics were then combined with the geologic mapping to site three gradient holes, two of which were drilled to depths of 635 feet and 1,000 feet, respectively.

To provide insight into provenance relations for multiple mid-Oligocene to mid-Miocene subbasins
(typically half-grabens) dissected by erosion in uplands lying north of the Catalina core complex and west of the San Pedro trough, 136 outcrop counts were made of clast types in tilted conglomerates of the Cloudburst and San Manuel Formations and their lateral equivalents in exposures as far north as the Gila River near Kearny. Clast counts were not made for younger conglomerates of the post-mid-Miocene Quiburis Formation, which fills the San Pedro trough and onlaps flanking uplands (Dickinson, 1998), because Quiburis clast assemblages in all cases match bedrock sources exposed uphill on the modern landscape. By contrast, paleotopography during Cloudburst and San Manuel deposition can only be inferred from local paleocurrent indicators (clast imbrications; figure 39 of Dickinson, 1991, p. 70-71) and clast assemblages in tilted strata. Areas included in this study were the Guild Wash allochthon between the Tortolita and Suizo Mountains, the Star Flat allochthon on the east flank of the Black Mountains, the
Black Hills (west of Mammoth), Camp Grant Wash (and Putnam Wash) between the Black Mountains and the Black Hills, multiple drainages of the Tortilla Mountains (Eagle Wash, Jim Thomas Wash, Hackberry Wash, Indian Camp Wash), and Ripsey Wash on the west flank of the Tortilla Mountains (Figs. 1-4).

A brief reconnaissance (5-8 November 2008) of the Big Sandy Formation near Wikieup (on US Highway 93 in Mohave County, Arizona) was undertaken to reconcile a reported dominance of lacustrine beds (Sheppard and Gude, 1972, 1973) with the largely terrestrial mammalian fauna reported from the formation (MacFadden et al., 1979; Lindsay and Mead, 2005). The issue is resolved satisfactorily by appreciation that nearly all fossil localities occur in fluvial beds that intertongue with and grade laterally into the dominant lacustrine strata.

Our interdisciplinary team of a geologist and volunteers, working with the City of Scottsdale and the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy (MSC), has confirmed that an unusual rock outcropping in the McDowell Mountains within the McDowell Sonoran Preserve in Scottsdale is travertine, a form of limestone. Limestone has not been identified previously in the McDowell Mountains or in the metro Phoenix area. This research is part of a coordinated effort on the part of MSC and the City of Scottsdale’s Preservation Division to use the talents and energy of MSC volunteers to better understand the geologic setting of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. Travertine is a whitish sedimentary rock consisting of calcium carbonate. Travertine forms when calcium carbonate is deposited by mineral springs. There also is evidence of possible plant fossils and algal residue associated with the travertine. Our preliminary analysis indicates that the travertine was deposited 2 to 20 million years ago, during the formation of the McDowell Mountains.