Economic Geology

Alaska is dominated by a history of tectonic events that foster mobilization and concentration of a wide variety of mineral commodities that are critical to the US economy and are vital to national defense, renewable-energy, and emerging electronics technologies.

In this time of increased focus on renewable energy technologies, rare earth elements (REEs) are of critical importance. For example, neodymium (Nd) is a REE used in the generator and motor magnets of wind turbines and electric vehicles. Reliance on REE imports puts the U.S. at high risk for supply disruption. The project will integrate geology, geophysics, petrology, geochronology, and economic...

Project objectives are to (1) develop innovative analytical techniques for isotope geochemistry and U-Pb geochronology using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), and (2) apply these techniques to collaborative research projects of high priority to the Mineral Resources Program, including studies related to the formation of "critical mineral" deposits, and...

Our project will characterize the primary critical minerals (minerals that contain critical elements in their base structure) that are not yet in the USGS Spectral Library. We propose to increase understanding of the spectral indicators of critical minerals using lab-based studies of hand specimens and drill core, hyperspectral field scanning, and hyperspectral images collected from aircraft.

The project objective is to develop and apply solution and in situ isotopic and trace element methods to emerging research opportunities to gain a better understanding of the processes controlling critical mineral deposits, metal mobility, and other geological inquiries.

This project makes the digital spatial data produced by the Mineral Resources Program available via a web portal so that users can easily access spatial data for solving scientific and technical problems: the Mineral Resources Online Spatial Data site.

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.

Platinum group elements, also known as PGEs, are a group of elements that have specific properties which make them useful for various applications in industry. One geologic setting that contains large concentrations of platinum group elements is layered mafic intrusions. This project will use new and preexisting geophysical datasets to characterize the internal structure of layered intrusions...

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 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).

The USGS, in combination with Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of Canada, formed the Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative (CMMI) in 2019 to combine expertise and collaboratively conduct research on critical mineral resources.

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...