Eastern Interior Region

The samples of the Eastern Interior Region considered here are those shown in Figure 1 west of the dashed north-south line in Illinois. All these samples are from Illinois beds 5 and 6. This selection was made to obtain a series of samples located at increasing distances from the source area of the sediments. Because the sedimentary source for the Indiana and Kentucky coal areas are less certainly known (6), the samples from those areas are not considered here. Except for beryllium and vanadium, the minor element content of samples from those areas is comparable to samples from western Illinois. The beryllium content of all these coals was reported by Stadnichenko and others (8). The unusually high vanadium content of some of the southern coals of the Eastern Interior Region is discussed below. 

Vanadium-Rich Coals in the Eastern Interior Region... 

Between 1900 and 1950, gastric cancer was one of the major types of cancer in the United States. Its incidence and mortality have decreased sharply since 1950 (41), and the concepts presented in this paper account for this decline. In other parts of the world, including Japan, the mountainous interior regions of Central and Western Latin America, and in Northern and Eastern Europe, as well as in Iceland, gastric cancer remains one of the major cancers. There is a North-South gradient, or South-North in the Southern hemisphere, with greater incidence in more frigid zones. 

The U.S. has vast coal resources of various geologic age (Carboniferous to Tertiary) and rank (lignite to anthracite). The regions with major coal resources in the conterminous U.S. are divided into six provinces Eastern, Interior, Rocky Mountains, Northern Great Plains, Gulf, and Pacific Coast. In addition, there are Alaskan coal fields (1). Information concerning geographic area, age, rank, reserve base, and sulfur abundance in coals from major basins in these provinces is summarized in Table I. 

There is considerable evidence in the literature that Western coals behave differently toward liquefaction than do coals from the East or from the Interior (1). The differences can be attributed to the geological and biological history of these regions and yielded a different skeletal structure for Western coal Coal liquefaction studies have demonstrated that the direct liquefaction of Western coals is more problematic and requires more severe conditions than for Eastern coals. 

Banerji (1977) believes that the BIF of the Singhbhum region of eastern India represent the exhalative phase of volcanism along a fissure zone, where iron and silica were carried to an interior sea and deposited, yielding alternating bands. 

Dyman T. S., Cobban W. A., Fox J. E., Hammond R. H., Nichols D. J., Perry W. J., Jr., Porter K. W., Rice D. D., Setterholm D. R., Shurr G. W., Tysdal R. G., Haley J. C., and Campen E. B. (1994) Cretaceous rocks from southwestern Montana to southwestern Minnesota, Northern Rocky Mountains and Great Plains region. In Perspectives on the Eastern Margin of the Cretaceous Western Interior Basin. Geological Society of America Special Paper 287 (eds. G. W. Shurr, G. A. Ludvigson, and R. H. Hammond). Geological Society of America, Boulder, pp. 5-26. 

This region covers the ridges ofthe Northern Cordilleras and theplateau dividing them. It inclndes the sonthern slopes of the Brooks Range, the Ynkon plateau and its eastern extension, the Fraser plateau, the Mackenzie Mountains and the Alaska Range. The boundary between Forest and Tundra ecosystems in Alaska fairly closely follows the July 13 °C isotherm. In coastal southwestern Alaska the boundary between Mountain Forest and Mountain Tundra ecosystems is lower than in the dry, more continental interior where the summer is warmer. 

Figure 8.2. Scanning electron micrograph of sheepskin leather, showing the demarcation between the grain (top) and the corium (interior), 500 x magnification. Courtesy of F. P. Roper and R. J. Carroll, Eastern Regional Research Center, U.S.D.A., Philadelphia.

---