Mapping, Mine Wastes and More Critical Minerals Science:
2024 Annual Review describes USGS progress on critical minerals
In 2024, the USGS developed new directions in critical mineral supply chain analysis, innovated new methods for assessing undiscovered mineral resources, and made progress towards characterizing critical minerals in mine wastes.
The most recent Critical Minerals Annual Review, published in the journal Mining Engineering, highlights USGS activities and accomplishments from 2024. The USGS leads national efforts to map resources and analyze the supply chains of critical minerals, which are essential to the U.S. economy and national security and have supply chains that are vulnerable to disruption.
In 2024, the USGS made great strides towards more sophisticated analyses of critical mineral supply chains and vulnerabilities, innovated time-saving methods for assessing undiscovered mineral resources, and collected high-quality data across the nation needed to map critical mineral resources, including in mine wastes.
Scroll through the images below to see some of the highlights.
A New View of Mineral Supply Risk
USGS used a new model to assess the impacts of potential China export restrictions on gallium and germanium supply to U.S. industrial output and gross domestic product (GDP). The paper is a major advancement in supply chain science and was published shortly before China imposed similar restrictions.
Insights into Critical Mineral Commodity Prices
A new paper by USGS sheds light on how change in price of certain critical minerals could impact consumer demand. The paper advances our understanding of how changes in mineral supply chains impact prices of key goods.
Accelerating Mineral Resource Assessments
USGS partnered with the Department of Defense to use machine learning to automate key, time-consuming steps in mineral resource assessment workflows. The resulting tools could shorten the amount of time required to estimate undiscovered mineral resources by several orders of magnitude.
Mapping Critical Minerals from the Air
In 2024, the USGS invested more than $43M in new high-quality airborne geophysical surveys that will help to identify below- and above-ground critical mineral resources. The USGS also continued its multi-year partnership with NASA to collect hyperspectral remote sensing data across much of the southwestern United States.
Mapping Critical Minerals in Alaska
The USGS partnered with the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys on new geologic mapping and airborne geophysical surveys in three mineral-rich regions of Alaska. Earth MRI also invested in new lidar data over legacy mine sites across the state.
Partnering with States to Map America
The USGS established new multi-year cooperative agreements with 22 state geological surveys to conduct geologic and geochemical mapping in areas prospective for critical mineral resources.
Mapping Mine Wastes
The USGS partnered with 25 states to map and characterize the critical mineral content of mine wastes from legacy mining.
Advancing Critical Mineral Recovery from Modern Mine Wastes
USGS partnered with mining company Rio Tinto to better understand the potential for recovering byproduct critical minerals from the waste stream of an active copper mine.
