Development of Mineral Environmental Assessment Methodologies

Mineral Environmental Assessment at Regional Scale

• Project Overview
• Task 1
• Task 2
• Task 3
• Task 4
• Products
• Project Contacts

Task Contacts: Thomas Frost and Geoff Plumlee

Task Objectives

The Mineral Resources Program has successfully completed, and continues to implement, various mineral-environmental assessments at the site, watershed and regional scale. These assessments have been able to collect extensive new geoenvironmental data for the areas in question. However, further method development is needed to conduct a national-scale Mineral Environmental Assessment (MEA) that optimally integrates information developed in a Quantitative Mineral Resource Assessment (QMRA) and that, because of the scale and expense involved, cannot be heavily based on newly collected geoenvironmental data.

In order to establish the best methodologies for the national MEA, it is advantageous to carry out a prototype MEA of a large region of the U.S. for which a quantitative mineral resource assessment has been completed. The prototype assessment would ideally be done within a 2-year framework, so that lessons learned from its implementation can be integrated into the planning process for the formal national QMRA-MEA to be started in Fiscal Year 2013.

The primary objective of this task will be to plan and implement a prototype qualitative mineral environmental assessment (MEA) on a selected large region of the Nation for which a quantitative mineral resource assessment (QMRA) has been completed. This GIS-based prototype assessment will:

test a variety of methodologies,
identify data gaps,
evaluate approaches for presenting the results, and
evaluate the extent to which a more rigorous, less qualitative approach can be applied to the MEA.

Subtasks to accomplish these objectives are:

Statement of Work

Write up methodologies for use in national MEA
Evaluate how results from multiple regions can be scaled up for depiction on national scale maps likely to be produced as part of the National QMRA

Products

Maps

Krevor, S.C., Graves, C.R., Van Gosen, B.S., and McCafferty, A.E., 2009, Mapping the mineral resource base for mineral carbon-dioxide sequestration in the conterminous United States: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 414, 14 p., 1 plate.

Presentations

McCafferty, A., Van Gosen, B., Krevor, S., and Graves, C., 2009, Geophysical delineation of magnesium-rich ultramafic rocks for mineral carbon sequestration [abstract]: Abstracts and program for the 2009 SME Annual Meeting & Exhibit, Feb. 22-25, 2009, Denver, Colo., p. 190.
McCafferty, A.E., 2008, Airborne geophysical data to characterize minerals related to human health and environmental issues: Invited talk presented at the 44th Brazilian Geological Congress, Oct. 2008, Curitiba, Brazil.
McCafferty, A.E., 2008, Geophysical mapping to identify naturally-occurring asbestos and heavy metals in the landscape: Invited talk presented at the 44th Brazilian Geological Congress, Medical Geology Mini-Course, Oct. 2008, Curitiba, Brazil.

Reports

McCafferty, A.E., Van Gosen, B.S., Krevor, S.C., and Graves, C.R., 2009, Geophysical delineation of Mg-rich ultramafic rocks for mineral carbon sequestration: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2009-1127, 24 p.

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