ASBOG FG practice exams

The assemblage of albite, chlorite, actinolite, and calcite would be most characteristic of

Greenschist facies - moderate pressure, low temp

A mineral that has the same fibrous habit as asbestos is

Wollastonite

A braided stream usually indicates that the stream

Has greater load than capacity - streams that flood on regular basis carry lots of suspendeds, leave braid patterns

Which of the following soils classified by the Unified Soil Classification System would be the best aquitard

CL - low plastic clay, high porosity, low permeability

Which deposit is most closely associated with rare earths?

Alkaline igneous rocks

The in-place granular disintegration product of granite is called

Grus - granite weathers to quartz sand

Interpretation of stereo-paired aerial photographs is NOT helpful when evaluating a site for

contaminant plume migration in a confined aquifer

What is the oldest age of typical oceanic crust?

180 million years

A nonfoliated metamorphic rock consisting principally of hornblende and plagioclase is called

Amphibolite

Sole marks indicate

Contact between a sand overlying a clay - sand fills depressions

Caves found within limestone result from

slowly circulating water below the water table

Plagioclase, quartz, biotite and hornblende would most likely be found in

Dacite

What are oscillatory waves in inland bodies of water called?

Seiches

A 4:1 (H:V) slope has what grade? what slope angle?

25%, 14 degrees

Continental convergent plate margins are characterized by

Mélanges of feldspathic sandstone, siltstone, and shale

Sphalerite, willemite, and smithsonite are all

zinc ores

Given a bed with an orientation of N65W, 25S

What is the corresponding attitude?

25 degrees, S25W

A soil material with a porosity of 50% would

Be classified as a CL

As defined by Richter on a Wood-Anderson seismograph, what is the difference in amplitude between a magnitude 6 and 8 earthquake?

100

What would NOT be the expected origin of a mercury deposit?

weathering

What type of water has never been circulated in the hydrologic cycle?

Juvenile - derived from magma that comes to surface for first fime

A bed has an attitude of N35W, 45NE. What is the apparent dip to the North?

30

Which of the following is NOT true of a sedimentary facies?

Fossil remnants will be consistent throughout the facies

During the Permian, seas had advanced into much of the western part of the North American continent. The Kaibab formation which formed during this time consists of a sandy limestone. When drawing a lithologic log of this formation how would it be depicted?

By modifying the typical limestone symbol by the addition of the sand symbol within the blocks of the limestone symbol

Settlement calculations are based on data obtained from which of these laboratory test?

consolidation

The storage coefficient and transmissivity are two important parameters calculated by using the

Theis equation

Name 3 main physical properties of rocks which are not logged by wirelines

Electrical, nuclear, acoustic

The inverse order of evaporite deposition is

Sylvite, halite, anhydrite, calcite

Which of the following rocks make poor aggregate for use with Portland cement?

Chert

The Mineral, Virginia earthquake in 2011 was felt up to 1,000 miles from the epicenter. But comparably sized earthquakes in California are not felt at the same distances. What phenomena explains this difference?

The crust is old and cold in the Eastern US and transmits the waves more effectively

Ground-penetrating radar is useful for determining

locations of buried objects

Contamination of groundwater from non hazardous landfill operations

Is managed under RCRA Subtitle D with state and local governments

What symbol would you look for to obtain good elevation control for placing an accurate location and elevation of a site?

BM, benchmark

Two isotopes often used for age dating groundwater are

Tritium and carbon

members of the phyllosilicate group are

Kaolinite, muscovite, chlorite

Which of the following is not a useful ratio in determining the age of rocks or sediments?

silica - carbon

Storage coefficient or storativity in an unconfined aquifer is equal to

Specific yield (ratio of vol of water drained due to gravity to total vol of rock or soil)

Ocean water rich in 18O indicates

16O is trapped in ice sheets

Soft sediments are best sampled with a _______ to obtain undisturbed samples.

Shelby tube

Which of the following is NOT typical of glacial deposits?

A pile of rocks at the base of a steep slope (talus)

Layered intrusives may result from

crystal settling

Each magnitude releases how much more energy than the previous magnitude?

32

Which geophysical technique is less likely to be used to investigate a massive sulfide ore body?

Seismic refraction

What does a slug test measure?

Localized values of permeability

Which trap is not exclusively a stratigraphic trap for petroleum?

Dipping homocline

When is a gravel pack used in a well?

When there are fine-grained sediments

Which of the following contributed to reduced shear strength in a potentially unstable slope?

Disturbance of sensitive materials

Groundwater that flows through different sized pores at different rates along flow paths and perpendicular to flow paths is caused by

Dispersion

Which of the following is a correct association of depositional environment and fossil assemblages?

Deltaic sandstones with fossil wood

According to Bowen's Reaction Series with decreasing temperature

Olivine is one of the first minerals to crystalize

A long, narrow, sinuous ridge of somewhat stratified sand and gravel of glacial origin is known as

An esker (serpentine shaped curved deposits from a stream under glacier)

Which mineral produces the most clay minerals during chemical weathering processes?

Feldspar

What would be the expected sequence of rock units from oldest to youngest for a transgressive sequence?

sandstone, shale, limestone

A tunnel-like structure created by a burrowing animal and filled with soil material from another horizon is called a

krotovina

Which of the following would cause the greatest health hazard?

0.18 mg/l Chromium

The most reliable source of elevation on a topographic map is

A bench mark

Mass wasting

the downslope movement of soil and rock due to gravity

In which soil horizon would you find hardpan

B horizon

When you have a situation where a high exit gradient is predicted at the downstream base of a dam what could be done to the dam design to reduce the exit gradient

Lengthen the flow path, install a drain, and drawdown the reservoir

To determine the fault slip most accurately you could use which of the following?

the offset noted in a cross section drawn in the fault plane

Granulite facies

Silliminanite, quartz, almandine, cordierite, biotite

Trilobites are found in which of the following?

Cambrian marine deposits

Kettle lakes are caused by

melted ice blocks that were left after the glacier retreated

Uncomformity

A break in the geologic record created when rock layers are eroded or when sediment is not deposited for a long period of time.

Nonconformity

A type of unconformity in which layered sedimentary rocks lie on an erosion surface cut into igneous or metamorphic rocks

Paraconformity

An unconformity for which there is no evidence but some geologists think should exist

A stratigraphic sequence that is composed, from the bottom of the column up, of limestone, gypsum, and halite would indicate what type of environment?

Regressive marine

How large of an earthquake is needed to create a tsunami?

Magnitude 7

Under what environmental conditions would you expect to find the thickest vadose zone?

Desert

Barchan dunes are characterized by

a crescent shape with tails to leeward rarely vegetated

Nature if an S wave generated by an earthquake

Travels slower than the P wave and shears the rock at right angles to the travel direction

when dilatancy occurs in granitic rock

the granite has been sheared and increases in volume

Carbonate Compensation Depth (CCD) is the depth where

calcium carbonate sedimentation equals dissolution

If you drilled a vertical borehole, which of the following would you expect to find where you have nearly horizontal beds that are offset by a thrust fault?

Repetition of beds with depth

Which geologic law explains the relative ages of rocks with respect to one another in a map or cross section in which all the geologic units are roughly parallel and are not overturned?

Law of cross cutting relationships

What are the 2 most important factors that contribute to the ability of an organism to be included in the fossil record?

Rapid burial and hard body parts

A fenster is

An eroded area of a thrust sheet that exposes younger rocks beneath the thrust

How does the thickness of the aquifer affect the storage?

The thicker the aquifer the greater the storage

A sandstone in contact with limestone has inclusions of limestone within its basal portion. Which is older?

The limestone is older and there is an unconformity between the 2 units.

A fossil assemblage that includes brachiopods, pelecypods, and bryozoans indicate a(n) _______ environment.

sublittoral

In a regressive sequence followed by the development of a delta one would expect the sequence in order of oldest to youngest to be

limestone, shale and sandstone overlain by sand clay and march deposits

The surface exposure of weathered sulfide deposits that has a distinctive color of the soil at the surface is called

gossan

What type of economic deposits would you expect to find a divergent tectonic boundary?

Kimberlites and Carbonatites

-oceanic and continental rifts

Given the following minerals, Bastnaesite, Didymium, Loparite, and Monazite, what elements are you looking for?

rare earth elements

Regolith encompasses which part of the surface of the Earth?

Soil horizons O, A, B, and C

What geomorphic process wold result in elliptical ponds, hummocky terrain, and springs?

Karst

A clay whose shear strength is decreased to a fraction of its former value by remolding is called

a sensitive soil

In a stratigraphic section that has, from bottom up, cross-bedded sandstone, ripple marked sandstone, clay stone, and siltstone intercedes with thin sand lenses, the probable depositional environment was

A dune to lagoon transition

Magnetic declination is constantly changing; therefore, if you have an old map on which you will be placing data obtained in the field you will need to ascertain the correct declination before measuring any orientations. What is the best way to obtain a local magnetic declination?

By orienting the map along a straight road and measuring the orientation with a compass

The seas transgressed much of the U.S. during the early Devonian. There were repeated inundations of the low lying areas. The equator trended NE-SW through the middle of the U.S. and the continent was migrating to the NW. What were the types of deposits developed along these coastal regions throughout the U.S.?

Thick deep-water limestone sequences

Would a decrease of cohesion within the soil materials on a moderately steep slope due to an increase in pore pressure increase or decrease the internal friction and what would be the impact of this on the factor of safety?

It would decrease the coefficient of friction and reduce the factor of safety

On a USGS topographic base map a closed topographic contour with small tic marks on the inside represents:

A closed depression

What is the name of the process through which wood becomes lithified?

Diagenesis

Abundant feldspar in a sedimentary rock indicates

Rapid deposition brought about by tectonism

You are investigating a site in which the aquifer water is contaminated at depths of 200-300 feet. What drilling method would result in the best quality groundwater data if expense is not a concern?

Cable tool

Lab analyses of a soil reveal that 75% of soil is smaller than the No. 4 sieve, 61% passes through the No. 200 sieve, the liquid limit is 62, and the dry strength and toughness are high. What would be the likely origin of this material?

Lake bed deposits

What mining method would be most appropriate for a disseminated ore that is in relatively weak and fractured rock?

Block caving

What caused the scalloped nature of the shoreline shown in the following photograph?

Longshore currents to the south

In areas of flat ground, what type of ground movement is commonly associated with earthquakes?

Lateral spreads - due to liquefaction of soils

How would you go about determining the correct magnetic declination before embarking on a field investigation in an area of complex geology?

Contact NOAA for the magnetic declination for your latitude