National Coal Resources Data System; USGS

The basic National Coal Resources Data System (NCRDS) allows users to interactively retrieve information on coal quantity and quality and to build new resource data from ongoing research on the geology of coal by the U.S. Geological Survey and state agencies.

The NCRDS is an automated system. Data bases accessed contain some proprietary data. Access to non-U.S. Geological Survey users is limited to nonproprietary data. NCRDS is a user-oriented computerized storage, retrieval, and display system devised by the U.S. Geological Survey to assess the quantity and quality of national coal resources. The U.S. Geological Survey has initiated a 5- to 10-year program to provide point-source coverage for the coal-bearing rocks in the U.S. Cooperative projects with many state geologic agencies have been funded to supplement U.S. Geological Survey work and to amass the volume of data required to assess U.S. coal resources. Currently, files containing summary areal coal tonnage estimates and proximate/ultimate chemical analyses and point-located major, minor, and trace-element analyses are available. The point-source files are used to calculate resource estimates and to depict trends in the occurrence and chemical characteristics of coal. Primary data for measurements, coal-bed outcrop patterns, burned, channeled, and mined-out areas, and geochemical analyses. System software can calculate coal resource estimates, generate overburden or interburden distribution, and delineate areas of coal with selected quality parameters (for example, >1 percent sulfur, <50 ppm Zinc) within specified boundaries, (for example, county, quadrangle, or lease tract). Data may be displayed descriptively by preformated tables, user-determined listings, and selected statistics or graphically by two-and three-dimensional diagrams, trend surfaces, isoline maps, and stratigraphic sections.

The system runs on a SUN Network of servers and workstations located in Reston, VA. and Denver, CO.