Innovation and tradition shape the future of mineral exploration

There is perhaps no better example of the convergence of traditional methods with leading-edge innovation in the mining industry than in the field of mineral exploration, where rock picks and decades-old handwritten surveys are merged with artificial intelligence and big data integration in efforts to locate valuable mineral deposits. The need to find new deposits of minerals is at an all-time high in order to meet the current and predicted demand for minerals. Take for example copper, a mineral that will be of critical importance to the transition from fossil fuels to a carbon-neutral future. It has been estimated that demand for copper will double by 2035. The demand for critical minerals is also expected to soar in the coming years. All of this comes during a time when the majority of easy-to-find deposits have been discovered, meaning the mineral deposits of the future will be found deeper underground or in areas not yet fully explored. Dave Bertuch, general manager, exploration and geology, at South 32 told Mining Engineering (ME) that exploration is “essentially, an exercise of land reduction. “You want to reduce the amount of land until you’ve gotten to just the little pieces that make sense to put money into,” he said. Bertuch and his team are currently working in Arizona’s Patagonia Mountains to identify additional targets near the known Hermosa zinc and manganese deposit that is being developed by South 32 and is expected to be in production by 2027. Working on a brownfield project increases the likelihood that Bertuch and his team could discover a deposit that might one day become a profitable and producing mine. But proximity to a known deposit alone does not guarantee success. The South 32 exploration team has conducted the usual field mapping, land surveying and analysis to identify 15 targets. In addition, they have incorporated data integration as a way to increase the chances of success. “You’re really trying to do as many things as possible before you drill,” said Bertuch. “We wanted to have as much data as possible, including historical data of past activity and mining claims. It’s like getting pieces of a puzzle and you are able to buy another piece of the puzzle by doing new work.” Some of the pieces might come from handwritten notes from 100 years ago and other pieces from geochemical reconnaissance surveys or airborne geophysical surveys. All of this data are collected to narrow the search to targets with rich potential. At the U.S. federal level, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is working to develop tools that will help identify mineral resources potential throughout the United States. Earth Mapping Resources Initiative Exploration geologists have always played a vital role in the early stages of mineral development by identifying and assessing the feasibility of deposits, but uncovering new deposits will require new tools and techniques. And data, lots of data. In November, the U.S. government announced that it plans to invest millions of dollars in strengthening the U.S. supply chain for mineral resources through USGS’s Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI). The Earth MRI program operates within the Mineral Resources Program of the USGS. It is an effort to modernize the nation’s mapping to get a better idea of where mineral deposits might exist. The data being collected are, and will continue to be available to anyone. This is part of an effort to better understand the mineral landscape of the United States. But just as proximity to a known deposit does not guarantee success in finding more deposits, the data alone will not necessarily lead to discovery. “Earth MRI collects modern, high-quality framework geoscience data and is presently focused on mapping and measuring domestic critical mineral resource potential across the United States,” Jamey Jones, acting Earth MRI science coordinator at USGS told ME. “Earth MRI generates new high-quality data from sources such as airborne geophysics, geologic mapping and geochemical mapping. “What the mineral resources program in the USGS does is it takes that information, it brings in other mineral resource information like historical data such as 43-101 reports, legacy geophysical data or other mapping that might not be at an ideal resolution, but might be of value and it brings them together,” Jones said. A helicopter with a boom that contains sensitive equipment for conducting airborne geophysical surveys. A screenshot of the U.S. Geological Survey Earth MRI Acquisitions viewer from usgs.gov. The goal of the combined data is to identify the common traits of a mineral deposit, whether that be surface conditions or geochemical data. This could be particularly valuable for commodities that do not have a long history of being targets of exploration programs — minerals such as cobalt or geranium. “We have a lot of historical geochemistry data, but a lot of the data from the past focused on major trace elements ... they didn’t necessarily have detection limits that allowed us to look at things that are currently considered critical,” Jones said. “Many of the old geochemical data sets didn’t have many of the critical minerals on the menu because nobody really thought that those elements were important.” Darcy McPhee, program manager of the Earth MRI program said the primary goal of the program is to provide national resource assessment for undiscovered mineral commodities in the United States. She noted that “the USGS is not doing exploration and does not explore or promote exploration, but we provide the data to help others explore in a more efficient manner.” The improved efficiency will be provided through data integration. “Earth MRI aims to collect, integrate and disseminate high-quality geoscience data across the nation to meet core science needs related to critical mineral resources,” said Jones. “Earth MRI aims to modernize the surface and subsurface geologic mapping of the United States, with an initial focus on identifying areas that may have the potential to contain critical mineral resources. Our scope includes both below-ground resources and above-ground resources such as those contained in mine waste. All data will be made publicly available, and they will be integrated and analyzed to produce authoritative assessments of undiscovered mineral resource potential across the nation.” The USGS distributed more than $51 million across 35 states and Puerto Rico in fiscal year 2023 to fund geoscience data collection and mapping in partnership with state geological surveys, data preservation programs, and scientific interpretation to identify areas of the country with potential for critical minerals. “Investments from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda are already helping us better understand our domestic critical mineral resources, a key step in securing a reliable and sustainable supply of the critical minerals that power everything from household appliances and electronics to low-carbon energy technologies like batteries and wind turbines,” USGS director Dave Applegate said in a statement. “Five years into Earth MRI we’ve covered an area equivalent to Montana and Texas combined with airborne geophysical data surveys,” said McPhee. “We have also uncovered promising mineral formations in northern Maine, including rare earth elements, niobium and zirconium, which are important for electronics, defense and manufacturing applications.” With the massive amount of data collected comes the challenge of organizing and analyzing the data. High-grade rare earth elements bearing phosphorite. “Now that we’re generating data at a pace that we’ve never done before, we’re trying to build the systems to get the data into a common framework where it can be analyzed efficiently,” Jones said. “We’re trying to build databases that bring all of our geophysics together in a way that internal users can use it, and then we can also hopefully serve it to external users. “Integration is everything because a good assessment depends on all sorts of things,” Jones said. “Each assessment has different needs. The mineral systems that host cobalt, for example, might have very different footprints or characteristics than the mineral systems that host lithium. So for lithium, you might be looking at things that are associated with a basin where you might find lithium, whereas for another commodity you might be looking at a different geologic environment. It all starts with bringing the information together.” As is the case with much of the mining industry in the 2020s, a great deal of the focus of the Earth MRI program is on finding the critical minerals that are in the greatest demand. This includes minerals such as lithium, nickel, zinc and cobalt. Currently, all of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Earth MRI objectives and the datasets presently focus on critical mineral resources but are applicable to a broad range of societal issues that include energy and water resources, natural hazards, land-use planning and infrastructure,” said Jones. “We envision Earth MRI as an enduring data collection effort that can adapt to other needs such as industrial mineral resources.” In addition to searching for potential targets of deposits still in the ground, the USGS has invested more than $2 million in cooperative agreements with 14 states to better map the locations of mine waste, add new information to the National Mine Waste Inventory, and measure the potential for critical minerals that might exist in that mine waste. “Another priority area of research involves a partnership with NASA to collect cutting-edge, high-altitude hyperspectral information across the southwestern United States,” the USGS wrote in a release. “Hyperspectral imaging is a means of collecting and analyzing data across the electromagnetic spectrum for each pixel in a digital image. This powerful tool enables us to identify the mineral composition of surface rocks, including mine wastes, and are also useful for understanding geological acid mine drainage, debris flows, agriculture, wildfires, biodiversity, and many other fields. So far, the USGS has provided $4 million to NASA to conduct surveys, with plans to continue the partnership.” KoBold Metals The integration of big data to traditional mineral exploration has helped many mining companies identify potential deposits. KoBold Metals is a leader in this space. The mining and exploration technology company that is supported by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the climate technology fund backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos currently invests more than $60 million annually across more than 60 projects on three continents. The company says it is turning mineral exploration into a repeatable science by using geoscience, comprehensive data aggregation and the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The company invests in aggregating all available information about the physics and chemistry of the Earth’s crust while using AI tools to determine which data to collect at each exploration step to reduce the level of uncertainty as much as possible. Exploration geologists examining samples. KoBold has developed its own tools to analyze data collected. On its website, KoBold writes, “We developed Machine Prospector, a continually evolving system comprising a growing repository of proprietary machine learning, data processing and artificial intelligence modules. KoBold scientists use this suite of tools in various combinations to assess prospects and guide decisions at a global scale.” Kurt House, cofounder and chief executive officer of KoBold Metals previously told ME that the company is focused on finding minerals around the world that will help combat climate change. “Stopping climate change requires fully electrifying the global automotive fleet, which in turn requires mining a lot more critical EV materials such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper,” said House. “By better understanding how high-grade deposits of these metals form, we will be better equipped to make exploration decisions and increase discovery success rates.” KoBold estimates that meeting global climate goals such as the Paris Climate Agreement will require discovering more than $5 trillion of incremental copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium at an unprecedented pace in a time when exploration success rates have slowed. “The exploration success rate is not only low, but it has been decreasing over the last two decades and that coincides with the time that we need to be finding more deposits,” said House. “The easy discoveries have all been made.” Workforce Big data integration and the use of AI is a step change in the field of mineral exploration, but that does not mean that the geologists in the field are a distant memory. The boots-onthe- ground work of the exploration geologists remains as important today as it did more than 100 years ago, when prospectors were scouring the land for gold and silver. “Big data is huge because we’ve collected all this information and we should absolutely put it to use but it doesn’t tell the whole story,” Jones said. “If you told me there was a cobalt concentration in deposit XY or Z, that is great, but it doesn’t tell us where it sits. “You still have to put people on the ground to map the geology and do some more detailed work. You still need to drill and log the core to understand the geology that can be so complex. If you don’t have somebody figuring out the anomalies you’re going to be missing something. Boots on the ground are still essential.

Innovation and tradition shape the future of mineral exploration

Authored by:
William Gleason

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