Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative: Australia, Canada and the U.S. Join Forces

Figure 1 (United States). Known critical mineral resources. Base from NOAA's ETOPO1 global relief model. USGS.

Three surveys, one initiative

The federal governments of Australia, Canada and the United States agree that critical mineral supply chains need to grow and diversify. Their geological surveys — Geoscience Australia (GA), the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) — formed the Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative (CMMI) to build a varied critical minerals industry in all three countries by:

• understanding known critical mineral resources better;
• working out the geology that controls critical minerals in deposits already producing them as byproducts;
• finding new sources through mineral potential mapping and quantitative assessments;
• promoting discovery in all three countries.

Figure 1 (Australia and Canada). Known critical mineral resources. USGS.

What makes a mineral critical

Critical minerals are natural resources essential to a nation's economy and security that could become scarce for geological, political or technical reasons. They have important uses and few good substitutes.

The list changes over time: a mineral critical 25 years ago may not be now, one critical now may matter less later, and one that isn't critical today may become so.

A global database

How critical minerals are distributed in ore deposits is poorly understood. Geochemical analyses of archived sample collections are building an inventory. Joining the OSNACA database (Ore Samples Normalised to Average Crustal Abundance) with other GA, GSC and USGS databases will start a global database — needed to understand what controls where critical minerals occur, and to make resource assessments more accurate.

What working together brings

GA, the GSC and the USGS will:

• build a shared understanding of critical minerals science;
• share data and expertise;
• find knowledge gaps;
• unify their critical mineral analyses;
• build on existing datasets for assessments;
• learn more about critical mineral concentrations in different deposit types;
• play to each other's strengths.

Mineral systems

The mineral systems approach looks at the geologic processes that form and preserve mineral deposits. Fitting critical minerals into that framework is one of the most important results of the three surveys sharing knowledge and data.

Figure 3. The scales of mineral systems in space and time, and their key geologic processes (modified from Huston and others, 2016). USGS.

Progress

Workshops in Denver, Colorado (July 2018) and Ottawa, Canada (December 2019) set out four research streams, with more workshops proposed.

Figure 4. The CMMI's research streams and goals. USGS.

1. Fundamental research: the global digital database.
2. Models: for example, turning conceptual models into mappable criteria.
3. Methods: for example, validation and model exchange.
4. Communication: for example, outreach and workshops.

Alongside them run environment, economics and metallurgy. The goals: share data better, find areas that could hold more supply, and promote discovery.

Sources

Based on International Geoscience Collaboration to Support Critical Mineral Discovery, USGS Fact Sheet 2020–3035 (July 2020), prepared with Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of Canada, U.S. Geological Survey; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Figures are taken from the fact sheet's PDF; a mining company's photograph of the Raglan mine, used there with permission, is not reproduced.