Mineral Resources Human Resources

[Jule Watkinson]

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This material was developed and reviewed through the InTeGrate curricular materials development process. This rigorous, structured process includes:team-based development to ensure materials are appropriate across multiple educational settings.multiple iterative reviews and feedback cycles through the course of material development with input to the authoring team from both project editors and an external assessment team.real in-class testing of materials in at least 3 institutions with external review of student assessment data.multiple reviews to ensure the materials meet the InTeGrate materials rubric which codifies best practices in curricular development, student assessment and pedagogic techniques.review by external experts for accuracy of the science content.

Despite humans' heavy reliance on Earth's mineral resources, few think about where the products they use come from and what it took to produce them. This module addresses that disconnect by combining learning about rocks and minerals (and how these become the products students use), methods of mineral resource discovery and extraction, and the impact of mineral resource use. This module allows important geoscience concepts to be taught in the context of important and immediate societal issues while also asking students to confront human issues such as environmental justice, economics, personal choice, and politics that may arise due to obtaining, beneficiating, transporting, trading, using, and disposing of natural resources.

Uses real-life examples of issues related to resource management and extraction for collaborative problem solving. These problems incorporate ideas from economics, social and environmental justice, and the geosciences.

These materials have been reviewed for their alignment with the Next Generation Science Standards. At the top of each page, you can click on the NGSS logo to see the specific connections. Visit InTeGrate and the NGSS to learn more about the process of alignment and how to use InTeGrate materials to implement the NGSS.

This unit about Mineral Resources includes opportunities for exposure to basic geologic concepts about mineral and rock-forming processes and the role of plate tectonics in these processes. It addresses this content mostly in the context CCC4 (Systems and System Models) although it can also be used to bring in other CCCs such as Energy and Matter and Stability and Change. A variety of SEPs from SEP4 (Analyzing and interpreting data), SEP6 (constructing explanations), and SEP7 (engaging in argument from evidence), and SEP8 (obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information) are emphasized, although SEP2 (developing and using models) and SEP5 (using mathematics) are also required to a lesser extent. SEP1 (asking questions) and SEP3(planning and conducting investigations) are not addressed. Important PEs in ESS3,The Earth and Human Activity, are addressed directly by Unit 6, the capstone activity as well as some of the module's earlier activities.

This module is appropriate for introductory-level science and social science courses. The module is designed to stand alone and can be easily adapted to many class sizes and formats (large- or small-enrollment classes, online/distance-learning courses, and interdisciplinary courses).

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Mining in America invokes passions pro and con. An embedded research project in a Mineralogy course provides students with first-hand experience to engage exploration, development and remediation of mineral resource deposits as a possible career path, and hosting mineral companies get access to state-of-the-art research results that can be used to inform their project operations. This instructional activity addresses national needs to develop mineral resources to sustain our economic health and national security, and to develop the workforce needed to support the mineral industries from discovery to environmental remediation.

Students in the core shack at the Black Butte Cu-Co Deposit, hosted by Tintina Resources.Provenance: Dave Mogk, Montana State University-Bozeman

Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license -nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license. The United States is facing crises with respect to mineral resources on two fronts: 1) the dependence of the security and economic health of the United States on critical and strategic mineral resources required to sustain our quality of life (NRC, 2008; see also USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, 2015), and 2) the need to train the future workforce that is prepared to work in the area of mineral resources, including exploration, development, mining, ore processing and environmental remediation of mineral resource deposits (NRC, 2013). Modern technologies demand use of resources from virtually the entire periodic table, most of which are exceedingly rare in nature, are not currently mined in deposits developed in the US, and are imported from countries that may be politically unstable or may not be particularly friendly to the interests of the U.S. Examples of uses of critical minerals include: solar panels (boron, gallium cadmium, germanium, indium, selenium, tellurium), wind turbines (cobalt, Rare Earth Elements, cadmium, lithium), cell phones (gold, palladium, platinum indium, tantalum, cesium)...you get the picture. With respect to preparation of geoscientists to explore, develop, mine and reclaim mineral resources, the AGI Status of the Workforce (2016) reports that only 4% of Geoscience graduates with a MA/MS degree were hired in the mineral sector (none were reported for BA/BS or PhD; Figure 4.2), even though the median salary in mining and geologic engineering is over $90,000/year (2015; Figure 4.10). Although there is well-founded concern about legacy environmental issues related to mining, the fact is that the quality of life in our modern society is strongly dependent on access to a wide array of mineral resources (see InTeGrate Module on Human's Dependence on Earth's Mineral Resources). We're in a world of hurt in our inattention to development of both the physical and human resources required to support the mineral extraction (and recovery) industries.

Almost all Earth materials are used by humans for something. We require metals for making machines, sands and gravels for making roads and buildings, sand for making computer chips, limestone and gypsum for making concrete, clays for making ceramics, gold, silver, copper and aluminum for making electric circuits, and diamonds and corundum (sapphire, ruby, emerald) for abrasives and jewelry.

Mineral resources can be divided into two major categories - Metallic and Nonmetallic. Metallic resources are things like Gold, Silver, Tin, Copper, Lead, Zinc, Iron, Nickel, Chromium, and Aluminum. Nonmetallic resources are things like sand, gravel, gypsum, halite, Uranium, dimension stone.

A mineral resource is a volume of rock enriched in one or more useful materials. In this sense a mineral refers to a useful material, a definition that is different from the way we defined a mineral back in Chapter 5. Here the word mineral can be any substance that comes from the Earth.

Since economics is what controls the grade or concentration of the substance in a deposit that makes the deposit profitable to mine, different substances require different concentrations to be profitable. But, the concentration that can be economically mined changes due to economic conditions such as demand for the substance and the cost of extraction.

For every substance we can determine the concentration necessary in a mineral deposit for profitable mining. By dividing this economical concentration by the average crustal abundance for that substance, we can determine a value called the concentration factor. The table below lists average crustal abundances and concentration factors for some of the important materials that are commonly sought. For example, Al, which has an average crustal abundance of 8%, has a concentration factor of 3 to 4. This means that an economic deposit of Aluminum must contain between 3 and 4 times the average crustal abundance, that is between 24 and 32% Aluminum, to be economical.

Magmatic process such as partial melting, crystal fractionation, or crystal settling in a magma chamber can concentrate ore minerals containing valuable substances by taking elements that were once widely dispersed in low concentrations in the magma and concentrating them in minerals that separate from the magma.

Sedimentary Ore Deposits - substances are concentrated by chemical precipitation from lake or sea water. Although clastic sedimentary processes can form mineral deposits, the term sedimentary mineral deposit is restricted to chemical sedimentation, where minerals containing valuable substances are precipitated directly out of water.

Placer Ore Deposits - substances are concentrated by flowing surface waters either in streams or along coastlines. The velocity of flowing water determines whether minerals are carried in suspension or deposited. When the velocity of the water slows, large minerals or minerals with a higher density are deposited. Heavy minerals like gold, diamond, and magnetite of the same size as a low density mineral like quartz will be deposited at a higher velocity than the quartz, thus the heavy minerals will be concentrated in areas where water current velocity is low. Mineral deposits formed in this way are called placer deposits. They occur in any area where current velocity is low, such as in point bar deposits, between ripple marks, behind submerged bars, or in holes on the bottom of a stream. The California gold rush in 1849 began when someone discovered rich placer deposits of gold in streams draining the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The gold originally formed in hydrothermal veins, but it was eroded out of the veins and carried in streams where it was deposited in placer deposits.

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