The State Geological Survey of Kansas, organized as a division of the University more than 50 years ago, has acquired its present scope and general plan of operation during the past 15-20 years. As the only State-supported agency charged with the responsibility of research in geology and mineral resources (including ground water) and service to the State's ever-expanding mineral industries this is indeed a large responsibility. The Kansas raw mineral output has been substantially exceeding 400 million dollars annually and the value of well water to agriculture, industries, and municipalities may approach a like amount. In addition to oil, natural gas, and coal, Kansas raw minerals now in production include: chalk, chat, clay, diatomaceous marl, dimension stone, gypsum, le d, limestone, salt, sand and gravel, sandstone, shale, silica sand, volcanic ash, and zinc. Mineral materials that have been investigated and constitute potential future additions to this list include anhydrite, asphalt rock, bentonite, feldspar, glass sand, high-alumina clay, lignite, oil shale, phosphatic shale, and pyrite.

In recent years the Survey's program has expanded from areal geologic mapping, subsurface studies, production statistics, and county ground-water investigations to diversified work in the field of mineral technology including petroleum engineering. In fact, at the present time the technical staff of the organization contains about as many ceramists, chemists, physicists, and engineers as it does geologists. The Kansas Survey is organized in departments of basic geology, publications and records, mineral resources (including sections of oil and gas, subsurface studies, petroleum engineering, ceramics, geochemistry, petrography, and the Pittsburg district office), ground-water resources, mineral fuels, and topographic mapping--the last three of which work cooperatively with the U. S. Ge logical Survey.

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