USGS Mineral Resources Program: The Science Behind Mineral Decisions

Stibnite, an ore of antimony — used in compounds that help prevent skin burns, extend battery life and refine the glass in cell-phone screens. USGS.

The U.S. is one of the world's largest users of mineral resources: they build our homes and cities, fertilize our crops, and create wealth. We rarely use them raw — we buy light bulbs, not the silica in the glass; cell phones, not the rare earth elements in the tiny magnets for speakers and vibration; cars, not the steel in the chassis.

The USGS Mineral Resources Program (MRP) provides unbiased science on mineral resource potential, production and consumption, and on how minerals interact with the environment. It is the federal government's only source for this science. Its four goals follow.

1. How mineral deposits form

• Why it matters: research on how and where deposits form, and on methods to predict the location and amount of undiscovered resources, cuts the uncertainty in resource assessments.
• Seeing underground: most undiscovered resources are hidden under vegetation or buried by barren rock and sediment. The MRP develops geophysical tools to image rocks and structures on and below the surface and build 3-D models of how resources are distributed, plus remote sensing and geochemical methods that pick up surface signatures of buried deposits.
• Every scale: from continental — which regional processes control mineralizing systems — to microscopic — local controls and which minerals occur together.

A thin section of hornfels in polarized light: plagioclase (white, and grey-and-white stripes), olivine (pink, yellow and purple), amphibole (brown-red, at top) and sulfides (dark-grey pockets ringed by amphibole). The field of view is 4.7 millimeters wide. USGS.

2. Inventories and assessments

Before assessing undiscovered resources, scientists inventory the known ones and learn what controls their distribution. They work out the region's geologic history, how its known deposits formed, and what criteria predict undiscovered ones. Expert teams then:

1. identify signatures suggesting undiscovered deposits;
2. outline mineral potential areas for specific deposit types;
3. estimate the quality and quantity of undiscovered deposits there.

Federal, state, tribal and local agencies use the assessments to guide mineral policy and land management.

From the USGS's first-ever global assessment of undiscovered copper: areas likely to hold sediment-hosted (dark red) and porphyry (pink) copper deposits that will feed future supply. USGS.

3. Effects on the environment and society

The MRP studies what happens when deposits weather naturally or are mined. That sets baseline conditions before development and anticipates problems with new deposits — such as releases of contaminants that could harm people and ecosystems. Knowing the baseline is essential to sound policy; knowing the impacts and how to mitigate them supports sustainable supply and responsible stewardship.

A stream in Colorado's Animas River watershed, stained by runoff from mineralized areas and abandoned-mine drainage. USGS.

4. Supply and reliability

Data on domestic and world mineral supplies and uses are vital to the economy and national security; public and private organizations use them to make decisions and forecast supply and demand.

• Collection: production, consumption, recycling, inventory and shipments from the U.S. mining and processing industry.
• Worldwide: production, trade and other data for more than 100 mineral commodities from about 180 countries.
• Supply-chain analysis: tracing how materials flow, mapping supply-chain complexity and documenting vulnerabilities — essential to planning for disruptions from natural hazards or human activity.

"Frac sand": pure quartz sand vital to hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas. Found only in some parts of the U.S., it must be mined and shipped to the oil fields — one example of materials flowing through a supply chain. USGS.

Current major areas of study

• Critical minerals: how and where deposits containing them form. Smartphones and other high-tech devices use many.
• Alaska: geologic investigations as the foundation for its mineral resource potential.
• The Midcontinent Rift: multidisciplinary studies of this major crustal feature's mineral potential.
• Hyperspectral imaging and geophysics: state-of-the-art tools for resource and environmental work.
• Materials flow: supply-chain and risk analysis — including a map of the main import sources for nonfuel commodities of which the U.S. was more than 50 percent net import reliant in 2015.

Hyperspectral imaging: each color marks a different mineral type. USGS.

Sources

Based on U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Resources Program — Mineral Resource Science: Supporting Informed Decisionmaking, by Aleeza M. Wilkins and Jeff L. Doebrich, USGS Fact Sheet 2016–3034 (September 2016), U.S. Geological Survey (DOI); a work of the United States government in the public domain. The opening, the photographs and the copper map come from the fact sheet's PDF; its Alaska map on a commercial basemap, and a smartphone graphic using third-party clip art, are left out. Contact: Mineral Resources Program Coordinator, 703-648-6100, minerals@usgs.gov.