wsgs.wyo.gov

The Wyoming State Geological Survey (WSGS) website has moved. The page at wsgs.wyo.gov now displays a notice directing visitors to the new location: main.wsgs.wyo.gov. Use the new address to reach the current site and its maps, publications, and geologic data. The old page still lists the agency's contact details, so it remains useful only as a pointer and for basic contact information.

What You'll Find on the WSGS Site

The WSGS describes its work as "interpreting the past, providing for the future." Its site organizes information around these main areas:

Recent items highlighted on the site include a Central Wyoming data release from an airborne geophysical survey conducted with the USGS, uranium and oil and gas summary reports for 2023, a pamphlet on the geology of Sinks Canyon State Park, and two reports on critical minerals (OFR 2023-2 and RI-80) covering heavy-mineral sandstones and radioactive conglomerates.

Finding Publications and Maps

Start from the Publications area, which offers a publication search plus sales and downloads. If you know what you need — a report number, a county map, or a topic like coal geology — search by that term first. For spatial data, the Maps section links to the mapping program, interactive maps, and the geologic map index. The interactive maps are the quickest way to view data by location before deciding whether to download a report or map sheet.

Contacting WSGS

The agency is based in Laramie. For questions about data or publications, the contact details listed on the site are:

• Address: P.O. Box 1347, Laramie, WY 82073
• Phone: (307) 766-2286
• Fax: (307) 766-2606
• Email: [email protected]

The site also lists a staff directory and director's office contacts under its About section, which is the better route if you need a specific program area such as groundwater or oil and gas.

Common Snags

• Landing on the old address: If you reach a page that only says the site has moved, follow the link to main.wsgs.wyo.gov rather than searching for menu items there.
• Expecting everything in one place: Maps, publications, and program data sit in separate sections, so a single search may not surface a map that is cataloged under the mapping program.
• Assuming online ordering: The site advertises sales and downloads, but the available material does not state prices or payment terms. Confirm cost and availability with WSGS directly before planning a purchase.

GIS (geographic information system) is software and a way of organizing data that links information to locations on the earth, so you can make maps and answer spatial questions—for example, which areas are within a certain distance of a feature, or how one layer of data overlaps another. You can start with free, public data and a free or low-cost desktop tool; the main requirements are a clear question, data that covers your area, and a way to check that your map is accurate.

The core idea: layers plus location

GIS combines two kinds of information:

• Spatial data — where something is (points, lines, polygons, or pixels on a grid).
• Attribute data — what it is (names, measurements, dates, categories).

Each theme is stored as a layer. A simple project might stack a boundary layer, a roads layer, and a points layer for sample sites. Turning layers on and off, and comparing them, is the basic operation behind most GIS analysis.

Vector vs. raster

Coordinate systems

Every layer needs a coordinate reference system so locations line up. If two layers appear offset or stretched when combined, a mismatched coordinate system is a common cause. Check the CRS of each layer before you analyze or measure distances.

What you can do with GIS

Common tasks include:

• Map making — produce a printable or shareable map of a study area.
• Overlay and proximity analysis — find features inside a boundary, or within a set distance of something.
• Resource and land-use planning — combine geology, water, and land layers to see where themes coincide.
• Change over time — compare layers from different dates.
• Data QA — spot gaps, duplicates, or misplaced records by plotting them.

For a first project, pick one question you can answer with two or three layers. A concrete example: "Which sample sites fall inside the mapped boundary, and how far is each from the nearest road?" That requires a boundary polygon, a points layer, and a roads layer—enough to practice loading data, setting the CRS, and running a spatial query.

How to start your first GIS project

1. State the question and the output. Decide whether you need a map, a table of results, or both. This determines which layers you need.
2. Collect data. Look for public geospatial data from government agencies and open data portals. State geological surveys, for instance, publish maps and spatial data alongside their publications; the Wyoming State Geological Survey lists an Interactive Maps section and a Mapping Program among its resources, and its site notes that it has moved to main.wsgs.wyo.gov. Confirm the current address and data-download terms on the agency's site before relying on a dataset.
3. Choose a tool. Desktop GIS packages (including free and open-source options) handle layers, coordinate systems, and analysis; web-based mapping tools are quicker for simple display. Match the tool to your question rather than the other way around.
4. Load and check each layer. Verify the CRS, the extent (does it cover your area?), and the attributes (are values in the units you expect?).
5. Run the analysis. Use overlay or proximity tools, then inspect the result rather than trusting it blindly.
6. Make the map. Add a legend, scale bar, north arrow, source credits, and date. Label only what the question needs.
7. Verify. Spot-check a few results against the source data, and note any gaps or assumptions.

Common sticking points

• Layers don't line up — usually a coordinate system mismatch; reproject to a common CRS.
• Missing or incomplete data — check the layer's extent and date; public datasets often cover only part of an area.
• Units differ — confirm whether distances are in meters, feet, or degrees before measuring.
• Overplotting — too many layers obscure the message; keep only what answers the question.

Choosing data and tools by need

Public agency data is a practical starting point because it often comes with documentation, but availability, formats, and any access conditions vary by agency—verify them at the source rather than assuming a dataset is complete or unrestricted.

Towson University (TU) is a public university in Towson, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb, and it describes itself as one of America's leading public universities. It offers undergraduate, graduate, and international admission pathways, a 329-acre campus, and a location inside one of the country's major employment regions. It is likely a fit if you want a large public university near Baltimore with strong value and career-outcome signals; it is less obviously a fit if you need a small, rural, or highly specialized single-focus institution.

Where Towson University is and what kind of school it is

TU sits in Towson, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb, and the university describes its location as centered amid one of the nation's most successful economic and employment regions. It is also described as Baltimore's largest university, with a 329-acre campus.

In its own framing, TU is a public university and a "powerful anchor institution in the greater Baltimore region," involved in enterprise research, business building, and community support. That positioning matters if you are weighing a school partly on regional access to jobs, internships, and partnerships rather than only on national brand.

Academics: what you can study and how to explore it

The site's main academic entry point is "Explore Academics," which the university defines by "rigorous and real-world learning." Majors and programs are listed under that section.

Admission is organized into three paths:

• Undergraduate admission — application forms for first-time undergraduate applicants.
• Graduate admission — application forms for master's, doctoral, and other graduate programs.
• International admission — a separate application path for international students.

If you are early in your search, the practical sequence is: browse majors and programs first, then confirm which admission path applies to you, then start the application. The site provides a "Start Your Application" and "Apply Now" entry rather than a single universal form.

Campus, location, and student experience

TU's campus is 329 acres, and the university offers both in-person visits ("Plan a Visit") and a virtual tour ("Take a Virtual Tour"). Location is presented as a deliberate advantage: the campus is in a Baltimore suburb within a major employment region.

Student life signals from the university include:

• 250+ student organizations representing diverse identity groups.
• A 5-star Campus Pride Index rating.
• Recognition as #1 in North America for gender equality (as stated by TU).
• 57% of students representing underserved racial and ethnic groups.

These are the university's own reported figures, so treat them as TU's positioning rather than independent verification.

Outcomes: employment, salary, and internships

TU reports several outcome metrics that are useful if career results are a deciding factor:

The university also cites rankings: #1 public university in Maryland (The Wall Street Journal), #2 value in Maryland (Washington Monthly, "Best Bang for the Buck"), #3 best public university in the North and #4 best college for veterans, North Region (U.S. News & World Report). Rankings and outcome figures are self-reported by the institution and change year to year, so check the current versions before relying on them.

Who Towson University is likely for

TU tends to match students who want:

• A large public university experience rather than a small private college.
• A Baltimore-area location with access to regional employers, internships, and partnerships.
• Broad academic choice across undergraduate and graduate programs, plus a defined international pathway.
• Value and career outcomes as priorities, given the value and salary figures TU highlights.
• Inclusive community as a stated institutional focus, based on the diversity and Pride Index signals above.

It is a weaker match if you specifically want a rural campus, a very small cohort, or a single specialized discipline rather than a full public university.

How to start the application process

1. Explore academics — review majors and programs to confirm TU offers your intended field.
2. Choose your admission path — undergraduate, graduate, or international.
3. Plan a visit or take the virtual tour — useful for judging the 329-acre campus and Baltimore-suburb setting.
4. Start your application — use the "Start Your Application" / "Apply Now" entry for the correct path.
5. Check current requirements and deadlines — the site provides application forms, but confirm dates and materials directly, since these are not fixed in the source material here.

The main practical caution: application requirements, deadlines, tuition, and financial aid details are not specified in the available site information, so verify them on the official admission pages before you plan around any assumption.

Dietary minerals are naturally occurring elements your body needs in small amounts to build bone, move muscles, carry oxygen, and regulate fluids and nerve signals. You get them from food and water, not from making them yourself. The two practical questions are which minerals matter most and where they show up on a plate. Major minerals (calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium) are needed in larger amounts; trace minerals (iron, zinc, selenium, iodine) are needed in tiny amounts but are just as essential. Below is what each does and which foods supply it, plus how to check your own intake.

What minerals are, and how they differ from vitamins

Vitamins are carbon-based compounds that your body can sometimes modify or store. Minerals are single elements — calcium, iron, potassium — that keep their identity and cannot be broken down by heat, light, or cooking. That difference has two consequences:

• Cooking doesn't destroy minerals the way it destroys some vitamins. Boiling can leach water-soluble minerals like potassium into the cooking water, but the mineral itself survives heat.
• Minerals interact with each other. Too much of one can crowd out another, which is why food sources generally beat isolated high doses.

Your body needs them for structural jobs (bone, teeth), signaling jobs (nerve impulses, muscle contraction), and transport jobs (oxygen in blood).

Major minerals: roles and food sources

These are the minerals your body needs in amounts of roughly 100 mg per day or more.

Most people in typical Western diets get plenty of sodium and phosphorus and often fall short on potassium, magnesium, and calcium. That pattern is worth knowing before you add supplements.

Trace minerals: small amounts, big jobs

Trace minerals are needed in milligrams or micrograms per day.

Two practical notes: iron from animal foods (heme iron) is absorbed more efficiently than iron from plants (non-heme iron), and pairing plant iron with vitamin C improves absorption. Brazil nuts are so selenium-dense that a couple a day can cover your needs — more is not better here.

Signs of deficiency and who may be at risk

Deficiency symptoms are often vague, which is why they're easy to miss. This is general information, not a diagnosis — persistent symptoms warrant a clinician's evaluation.

• Iron: fatigue, pale skin, shortness of breath, cold hands and feet. Higher risk: menstruating women, pregnant people, vegetarians and vegans, frequent blood donors.
• Calcium: muscle cramps, tingling in fingers, brittle nails; long-term shortfall contributes to low bone density. Higher risk: people who avoid dairy without substitutes, postmenopausal women.
• Magnesium: muscle twitches, cramps, fatigue, poor sleep. Higher risk: people with digestive conditions that reduce absorption, heavy alcohol use.
• Zinc: slow wound healing, frequent infections, loss of taste or smell. Higher risk: vegetarians (phytates in grains and legumes reduce absorption), older adults.
• Iodine: thyroid-related symptoms such as fatigue and weight changes. Higher risk: people who avoid iodized salt and seafood.
• Potassium: muscle weakness, cramps, irregular heartbeat. Higher risk: people on certain diuretics.

If you suspect a deficiency, the useful next step is to look at what you actually eat over a week rather than guess from a single day.

How to check your mineral intake with a food tracker

A tracker turns "I think I eat well" into a list of numbers you can compare against targets. MyFoodData is built for this — its comparison table states it tracks 100+ micronutrients free, where other apps paywall micronutrients, and it offers verified food badges, free barcode scanning, and web plus Android and iOS apps. Premium removes ads and adds unlimited photo scanning, unlimited voice entry, custom day plans, and profile sharing; the free tier keeps the nutrient depth.

A workable routine:

1. Log everything for 3–7 days, including drinks and cooking oils. Partial logging produces misleading mineral totals.
2. Open the nutrient breakdown for each day and look at calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and zinc first — these are the ones most commonly short.
3. Use verified badges when picking foods in search, so you're comparing against complete data rather than a sparse entry.
4. Compare foods side by side — for example, two breakfast options — to see which one closes your gap instead of guessing.
5. Adjust one meal at a time. Adding a serving of beans, a handful of seeds, or a cup of yogurt is easier to sustain than rebuilding your whole diet.

Expected result: after a few days you'll see which minerals you consistently hit and which you consistently miss, and you can target the misses with specific foods from the tables above.

Common snags: crowdsourced entries with missing mineral values can make a food look empty when it isn't — prefer verified entries. And a single low day means little; look at the pattern across the week.

Quick reference: one food, several minerals

If you want efficiency rather than a long shopping list, these foods cover multiple minerals at once:

• Beans and lentils: potassium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper, manganese
• Leafy greens (spinach, kale): calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, manganese
• Nuts and seeds: magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, manganese
• Dairy and fortified plant milks: calcium, potassium, phosphorus, iodine
• Whole grains: magnesium, iron, zinc, selenium, manganese
• Seafood: iodine, selenium, zinc, iron, copper

Build meals around two or three of these categories and most mineral gaps close without supplements.

A government or municipal website is a public-service platform, not a marketing site. Before you build or redesign one, plan for four things that rarely appear on a business site: accessibility compliance, public-records and transparency obligations, a document-heavy content model (agendas, minutes, permits, ordinances), and procurement rules that shape who can bid and how the project is managed. If your project is a small town site with a handful of pages, the same four apply — just at a smaller scale. The sections below cover what each one changes in practice, plus how to choose a CMS and run the redesign.

How a municipal site differs from a business site

The practical consequence: decisions that are cosmetic on a business site — URL structure, document naming, who can publish — become governance questions on a municipal site.

Core features a city or local government site needs

• Meeting agendas and minutes, posted on a predictable schedule and archived by date, with the meeting body (council, planning commission, board) clearly labeled.
• Public documents: ordinances, resolutions, budgets, bids/RFPs, and forms — ideally in a searchable document library rather than scattered PDFs.
• Permits and licenses: what's required, how to apply, fees, and status where the process allows it.
• Staff and department directories: who to contact, for what, and how — with roles that survive staff turnover.
• News, alerts, and notices: emergency notices, road closures, public hearings.
• Payments and service requests where the jurisdiction supports them (utility bills, taxes, reporting a problem).
• Calendar consolidating public meetings and community events.
• Search that works on documents, not just pages — residents usually arrive looking for a specific form or record.

Choosing a CMS: municipal-specific vs general-purpose

There is no single correct answer; it depends on your publishing volume, IT capacity, and procurement constraints.

A CMS built for municipalities tends to fit when:

• You need agenda/minutes workflows and document archiving out of the box.
• Many non-technical staff across departments will publish.
• You want accessibility features and compliance tooling built into the authoring experience rather than bolted on.
• You prefer a vendor who already understands government procurement and records practices.

A general-purpose CMS can work when:

• You have in-house developers or a strong IT department to configure and maintain it.
• Your content model is simple and your publishing team is small.
• You need tight integration with systems you already run and are prepared to build the government-specific pieces yourself.

Evaluate both against the same criteria: accessibility conformance, document management, multi-department permissions, search quality, hosting and security, migration support, and total cost over the contract term. Ask each vendor to demonstrate a real agenda-to-archive workflow, not a slide.

Accessibility and compliance considerations

Accessibility is the requirement most likely to change your design and content decisions, so treat it as a constraint from day one rather than a cleanup task.

• Target a recognized standard (commonly WCAG 2.x at the level your jurisdiction or funder requires) and state it in the RFP so vendors respond to the same bar.
• Plan for accessible documents, not just accessible pages. A scanned, untagged PDF of a meeting packet is a common failure point; build a process for producing tagged, readable documents.
• Budget for ongoing testing and remediation — every new page and uploaded file can introduce a new issue.
• Consider captioning and transcripts for public meeting video, and plain-language alternatives for complex notices.
• Keep an accessible way to contact the government for anyone who cannot use the site.

Accessibility also interacts with procurement: if conformance is a contract requirement with defined acceptance testing, you have recourse when deliverables fall short.

Typical steps and stakeholders in a municipal redesign

1. Define the project and the decision-makers. Identify an executive sponsor (often the city manager or an equivalent), a project lead, and a working group with representatives from IT, communications, the clerk's office, and major departments.
2. Inventory content and documents. You will find duplicates, outdated PDFs, and orphaned pages. Decide what is migrated, rewritten, or retired — this is usually the largest hidden cost.
3. Write requirements, including accessibility and records. Specify the CMS capabilities, document workflows, integrations, hosting, security, training, and support you need.
4. Run procurement. Follow your jurisdiction's rules for RFPs, evaluation criteria, and vendor selection; publish the timeline.
5. Design with residents, not just staff. Test navigation and search with realistic tasks ("find the permit for a fence," "read last month's council minutes").
6. Migrate and redirect. Preserve URLs where possible and set up redirects so public links and citations don't break.
7. Train publishers across departments and document who owns which section.
8. Launch, then maintain. Schedule content reviews, accessibility audits, and a plan for the next refresh.

Common pitfalls to plan around

• Underestimating document migration. Meeting archives and permit forms are often the bulk of the work.
• Treating accessibility as a final QA step instead of a design and authoring requirement.
• No content ownership after launch, so pages go stale and residents lose trust in the site.
• Broken public links from a redesign that changes URL structure without redirects.
• Assuming a new CMS fixes content problems — it doesn't; the content model and governance do.

If you are early in the process, the highest-value first step is a content and document inventory plus a written accessibility target. Those two artifacts shape your requirements, your budget, and your vendor questions more than any feature list.