Bayesian modeling of NURE airborne radiometric data for the conterminous United States: predictions and grids

Publication Date

2020-12-04

Start Date

1973

End Date

2020

Goldman, M.A., and Ellefsen, K.J., 2020, Bayesian modeling of NURE airborne radiometric data for the conterminous United States: predictions and grids: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9YEAFHI.

Type: Citation

The National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) airborne program was established in 1973 to collect radiometric data for the conterminous United States and Alaska for the purpose of identifying uranium resources in the United States (Hill and others, 2009). Surveys were flown at a nominal terrain clearance of 120 meters. Each airborne data point samples an area of several thousand square meters to a depth of about 30 centimeters (Duval and others, 1971). Surveys were flown with 10-kilometer spacing over most of the eastern conterminous United States, and 5-kilometer spacing over most of the western conterminous United States. The data were collected to provide a regional picture of natural radioactivity across parts of North America (Duval and others, 2005). The flightline data for the United States were previously processed by Duval (2001), Duval (2000), and Duval and Riggle (1999) and later compiled into five separate databases (eastern U.S., east-central U.S., west-central U.S., western U.S., and Alaska) (Duval and others, 2005). The databases compiled by Duval and others (2005) were added to the original report in 2009, and are available at https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1413/. This data release presents new gridded products created by the application of Bayesian statistical techniques to the national compilation of airborne radiometric data for the conterminous United States. The statistical methods are available as an R package (Ellefsen and others, 2020) and described by Ellefsen and Van Gosen (2020). The purpose of creating the grids was to demonstrate the application of these new methods to airborne radiometric data, providing not only maps of predicted values of equivalent thorium, equivalent uranium, and potassium, but also estimates of uncertainty associated with those predictions. Additional objectives were to create grids that were scaled appropriately to the data, document checks of model fit, and provide gridding methods that can be implemented in open-source software.

ScienceBase WMS

ScienceBase WCS

• USGS Data Release Products
• USGS Geology, Geophysics, and Geochemistry Science Center