Deposit Characterization and Identification

The project seeks to better understand the mineral systems of the Boulder batholith and surrounding region in Montana using new airborne geophysical data in conjunction with geologic mapping.

Our objective is to develop a national-scale, geospatial database that is the authoritative source of the most important mines, mineral deposits, and mineral districts of the United States.

The Silverton caldera complex in southwest Colorado hosts base and precious metals that have been mined since the late 1800s. Extensive mine workings, excellent bedrock exposures, and deeply incised drainages make this area a natural laboratory ideally suited for furthering our understanding of the mineral systems in a volcanic environment. In addition, state-of-the-art geophysical data processing...

The project objective is to determine the processes responsible for critical element enrichment in carbonatites and to enhance our ability to identify and assess economic deposits. This project will work at various scales to meet this objective and will primarily focus on deposits within the US or our Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative collaborative Nations Canada and Australia.

The project objective is to provide follow-up geophysical ground data acquisition and interpretation for areas involving Precambrian geologic settings in the Upper Midwest and Rocky Mountains. The project is designed fill gaps and to complement the high-quality aeromagnetic acquired during the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI).

This Project integrates several geochemical tools—stable isotope geochemistry, noble gas geochemistry, active gas geochemistry, single fluid inclusion chemistry, and fluid inclusion solute chemistry—in studies of the processes that form mineral deposits and the processes that disrupt them during mining or natural weathering. Research is directed toward fundamental scientific questions or, in...

The Midcontinent Rift system and surrounding Precambrian rocks are known to host highly significant mineral resources. Our project objectives are to increase understanding of this system through the integration of new and legacy geophysical data with geochemical and borehole data, map the lithology and structure of PreCambrian rocks, and develop an integrated 3D geologic model of the region.

Understanding the genesis of ore deposits and their behavior in the environment is a subject of great importance to the Nation. A relatively new tool to aid in these efforts to investigate the origin and environmental effects of ore deposits is the use of "heavy" metal stable isotopes. Our research objectives are to utilize various isotopic systems to advance our understanding of ore genesis and...

Critical elements are essential to the modern economy and have potential supply chain disruptions, but compared to most base and precious metals, little work has been done in understanding ore-grade enrichments. Carbonatites are the primary source of the worlds light rare earth elements and niobium, and a potential source for heavy rare earths, scandium, tantalum, and thorium. Project objectives...

The objective of this project is to use high-resolution state-of-the-art airborne and regional ground geophysical methods to map an underexplored region of the southern Midcontinent that is important to economic and critical mineral deposits.

This project is focused on the sediment-hosted copper deposits of the Midcontinent Rift, with three main objectives: 1) describe the ore mineralogy and geochemistry of the White Pine and Copperwood deposits, 2) evaluate whether hydrothermal alteration in footwall rocks can be used as a vector towards ore, and 3) provide a careful scoping study to evaluate whether unconventional platinum-group...

The overall project objective is a comprehensive analysis of the natural and anthropogenic consequences of extensive ore and trace mineralization in the southern midcontinent of the U.S. with a focus on Missouri. This will be conducted at two scales: 1) landscape and 2) process-level. 1) Landscape scale using geospatial and machine learning techniques to combine multiple geochemical and geologic...