The Utah Geological Survey is based in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

, United States. It also has an office in

Cedar City Cedar City is the largest city in Iron County, Utah, United States. It is located south of Salt Lake City, and north of Las Vegas on Interstate 15. It is the home of Southern Utah University, the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Utah Summer Gam ...

, Utah. It is a division of the Utah Department of Natural Resources

and is an applied scientific agency, which creates, interprets, and provides information about Utah's geological environment, resources and hazards, in order to promote safe, beneficial, and wise land usage. Its departments and programs are: Editorial Services, Geologic Hazards Program, Energy & Minerals Program, Geologic Information and Outreach Program, Geologic Mapping Program, Ground Water and Paleontology Program, and the State Energy Program. The UGS has worked on countless projects in the state, including statewide

geologic hazards A geologic hazard or geohazard is an adverse geologic condition capable of causing widespread damage or loss of property and life. These hazards are geological and environmental conditions and involve long-term or short-term geological process ...

maps,

oil shale Oil shale is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons can be produced. In addition to kerogen, general composition of oil shales constitute ...

assessment,

Great Salt Lake The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, particula ...

studies, fault trenching, and the Snake Valley/West Desert

Groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...

Monitoring Well Project. In addition, recent research and general geologic information is given in teacher-friendly formats for anyone to use.

History

The "University Geological and Resource Survey of Utah" was founded in 1919, but without funding. In 1931 the "Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey" was created by the

Utah State Legislature The Utah State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Utah. It is a bicameral body, comprising the Utah House of Representatives, with 75 state representatives, and the Utah Senate, with 29 state senators. There are no term li ...

. The

state governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

appointed an advisory board, but no funding was appropriated for salaries or operations and no personnel were assigned to the Survey. In 1941 the UGMS was placed in the newly created “Utah State Department of Publicity and Industrial Development” (UPID). The UPID hired geologist A.M. Buranek. Over the next few years, Buranek and other contract personnel publish 36 geologic publications sponsored by the UPID. During 1946 the governor appointed Arthur L. Crawford as commissioner of the UPID and urged Crawford to activate the UGMS. Crawford re-hired Buranek and added other geologists, but work continued under the auspices of the UPID. UPID was disbanded by the state in 1949 and the UGMS was transferred to the State School of Mines and Mineral Industries at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

. Crawford was appointed first Director of the UGMS and the Legislature appropriated $25,000 for the 1949–1951 biennial budget. From 1961 to 1965 the UGMS and University of Utah College of Mines and Mineral Industries jointly published the four-part, 1:250,000-scale geologic map of Utah. The first issue of the quarterly publication Quarterly Review (renamed Survey Notes in 1976), containing information pertaining to Utah's geology and mineral industry, was published in 1964. In 1973 the Legislature transferred the UGMS from the University of Utah to the Utah Department of Natural Resources and officially named the Survey Director as the State Geologist. The Survey's name was also shortened to “Utah Geological and Mineral Survey” (previously “Mineralogical”). In 1977, when it created the Utah Seismic Safety Advisory Council,Olson, Richard S., and Olson, Robert A., 1994. ''Trapped in Politics: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Utah Seismic Safety Advisory Council''. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 77–94.
/ref> the Legislature charged the Survey with responsibility for assessing earthquake risk

throughout the state. The UGMS name was shortened again to “Utah Geological Survey” in 1991. In 1996 the UGS moved to the new Utah Department of Natural Resources complex and opened its regional office in Cedar City.http://files.geology.utah.gov/surveynotes/archives/snt31-3.pdf

References

External links

Utah Geological Survey WebsiteUtah State Energy Program
{{Authority control Government of Utah, Geological Geological surveys