The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is a party to joint interagency Memorandums of Understanding with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) to coordinate resource assessments and evaluations of BLM-administered lands. Resource assessments of BLM Resource Areas, which are conducted by the USGS, assist the BLM in meeting inventory and evaluation, resource-management planning, and other management requirements of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. This report is part of a resource assessment of BLM-administered land in northwest Nevada and northeast California. An earlier report, which summarizes the geology and its relation to resources (Doebrich, 1996), serves as a foundation for the interpretative discussion in the present report. The 1:2,000,000 map scales of figures 3 and 5 in the presesent report match the map scales of Doebrich (1996).