Critical Mineral Focus Areas in the Conterminous United States Infographic Poster

Critical Mineral Focus Areas in the Conterminous United States Infographic Poster (24" X 36" original size)

The Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI) launched in 2019 as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey and the State geological surveys to acquire new geologic data to identify areas that may have the potential to contain critical mineral resources. Using a framework of mineral systems and associated mineral deposit types that could possibly host critical minerals, broad focus areas were developed to prioritize target areas for new data acquisition. Many of these areas overlap geographic areas in the conterminous United States where wells have been drilled for geothermal energy or for oil and gas exploration and production. Waters have been sampled from these wells and analyzed for many critical minerals within numerous focus areas; the data are available in two geochemical databases. Samples include geothermal well waters in the western U.S. and waters co-produced from geologic formations that yield oil and gas throughout the conterminous United States. In addition, coal fields are coincident with, or partly overlap, many focus areas. These minerals and energy data sets can be combined to identify potential areas for evaluating waters associated with ore deposits and considering new technologies, such as in situ mining, for critical mineral resource recovery.