15.3: Mineral Resources

Mineral resources, while principally nonrenewable, are generally placed in two main categories: metallic, which contain metals, and nonmetallic, which contain other useful materials. Most mining has been traditionally focused on extracting metallic minerals. Human society has advanced significantly because we've developed the knowledge and technologies to yield metal from the Earth. This knowledge has allowed humans to build the machines, buildings, and monetary systems that dominate our world today. Locating and recovering these metals has been a key facet of the study of geology since its inception. Every element across the periodic table has specific applications in human civilization. Metallic mineral mining is the source of many of these elements.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Gold-bearing quartz vein from California.

Types of Metallic Mineral Deposits

The various ways in which minerals and their associated elements concentrate to form ore deposits are too complex and numerous to fully review in this text. However, entire careers are built around them. Some of the more common types of these deposits are described, along with their associated elemental concentrations and world-class occurrences.

Magmatic Processes

When a magmatic body crystallizes and differentiates, it can cause certain minerals and elements to concentrate. Layered intrusions, typically ultramafic to mafic, can host deposits that contain copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, rhodium, and chromium. The Stillwater Complex in Montana is an example of economic quantities of a layered mafic intrusion [30]. Associated deposit types can contain chromium or titanium-vanadium. The largest magmatic deposits in the world are the chromite deposits in the Bushveld Igneous Complex in South Africa [31]. These rocks have an areal extent larger than the state of Utah. The chromite occurs in layers, which resemble sedimentary layers, except these layers occurred within a crystallizing magma chamber.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Layered intrusion of dark chromium-bearing minerals, Bushveld Complex, South Africa.

Water and other volatiles that are not incorporated into mineral crystals when a magma crystallizes can become concentrated around the margins of these crystallizing magmas. Ions in these hot fluids are very mobile and can form exceptionally large crystals. Once crystallized, these large crystal masses are called pegmatites. They form from magma fluids that are expelled from solidifying magma when nearly the entire magma body has crystallized. In addition to minerals that are predominant in the main igneous mass, such as quartz, feldspar, and mica, pegmatite bodies may also contain very large crystals of unusual minerals that contain rare elements like beryllium, lithium, tantalum, niobium, and tin, as well as native elements like gold [32]. Such pegmatites are ores of these metals.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): This pegmatite from Brazil contains lithium-rich green elbaite (a tourmaline) and purple lepidolite (a mica).

An unusual magmatic formation is a kimberlite pipe, which is a volcanic conduit that transports ultramafic magma from depths in the mantle to the surface. Diamonds, which are formed at great temperatures and pressures of depth, are transported by a kimberlite pipe to locations where they can be mined. The process that created these kimberlite ultramafic rocks is no longer common on Earth. Most of the known deposits are from the Archean Eon [33].

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Schematic diagram of a kimberlite pipe.

Hydrothermal Processes

Fluids rising from crystallizing magmatic bodies or heated by the geothermal gradient cause many geochemical reactions that form various mineral deposits. The most active hydrothermal process today produces volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposits, which form from black smoker hydrothermal chimney activity near mid-ocean ridges all over the world. They commonly contain copper, zinc, lead, gold, and silver when found on the surface [34]. Evidence from around 7000 BCE in a period known as the Chalcolithic shows copper was among the earliest metals smelted by humans as means of obtaining higher temperatures were developed. The largest of these VMS deposits occur in Precambrian age rocks. The Jerome deposit in central Arizona is a good example.

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): The complex chemistry around mid-ocean ridges.

Another deposit type that is derived from magma-heated water is a porphyry deposit. This is not to be confused with the igneous texture porphyritic, although the name is derived from the porphyritic texture that is nearly always present in the igneous rocks associated with a porphyry deposit. Several types of porphyry deposits exist, such as porphyry copper, porphyry molybdenum, and porphyry tin. These deposits contain low-grade disseminated ore minerals closely associated with intermediate and felsic intrusive rocks that are present over a very large area [35]. Porphyry deposits are typically the largest mines on Earth. One of the largest, richest, and possibly best-studied mine in the world is Utah’s Kennecott Bingham Canyon Mine. It is an open-pit mine, which, for over 100 years, has produced several elements including copper, gold, molybdenum, and silver. Underground carbonate replacement deposits produce lead, zinc, gold, silver, and copper [36]. In the mine's past, the open pit predominately produced copper and gold from chalcopyrite and bornite. Gold only occurs in minor quantities in the copper-bearing minerals, but because the Kennecott Bingham Canyon Mine produces on such a large scale, it is one of the largest gold mines in the U.S. In the future, this mine may produce more copper and molybdenum (molybdenite) from deeper underground mines.

Most porphyry copper deposits owe their high metal content, and hence, their economic value to weathering processes called supergene enrichment which occurs when the deposit is uplifted, eroded, and exposed to oxidation [37]. This process occurred millions of years after the initial igneous intrusion and hydrothermal expulsion ends. When the deposit's upper pyrite-rich portion is exposed to rain, pyrite in the oxidizing zone creates an extremely acid condition that dissolves copper out of copper minerals such as chalcopyrite, and converts the chalcopyrite to iron oxides, such as hematite or goethite. The copper minerals are carried downward in water until they arrive at the groundwater table and an environment where the primary copper minerals are converted into secondary higher-copper content minerals. Chalcopyrite (35% Cu) is converted to bornite (63% Cu) and ultimately, chalcocite (80% Cu). Without this enriched zone, which is 2 to 5 times higher in copper content than the main deposit, most porphyry copper deposits would not be economic to mine.

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): The Morenci porphyry is oxidized toward its top (as seen as red rocks in the wall of the mine), creating supergene enrichment.

If limestone or other calcareous sedimentary rocks are present near the magmatic body, then another type of ore deposit called a skarn deposit forms. These metamorphic rocks form as magma-derived, highly saline metalliferous fluids react with carbonate rocks, creating calcium-magnesium-silicate minerals like pyroxene, amphibole, and garnet, as well as high-grade iron, copper, zinc minerals and gold [38]. Intrusions that are genetically related to the intrusion that made the Kennecott Bingham Canyon deposit have also produced copper-gold skarns, which were mined by the early European settlers in Utah [39; 40]. When iron and/or sulfide deposits  undergo metamorphism, the grain size commonly increases, which makes separating the gangue from the desired sulfide or oxide minerals much easier.

Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Garnet-augite skarn from Italy.

Sediment-hosted disseminated gold deposits consist of low concentrations of microscopic gold as inclusions and disseminated atoms in pyrite crystals. These are formed via low-level hydrothermal reactions, generally in the realm of diagenesis, that occur in certain rock types, namely muddy carbonates and limey mudstones. This hydrothermal alteration is generally far-removed from a magma source but can be found in rocks situated with a high geothermal gradient. The Mercur deposit in Utah's Oquirrh Mountains was this type's earliest locally mined deposit. There, almost one million ounces of gold were recovered between 1890 and 1917. In the 1960s, a metallurgical process using cyanide was developed for these low-grade ore types. These deposits are also called Carlin-type deposits because the disseminated deposit near Carlin, Nevada is where the new technology was first applied and where the first definitive scientific studies were conducted [41]. Gold was introduced into these deposits by hydrothermal fluids that reacted with silty calcareous rocks, removing carbonate, creating additional permeability, and adding silica and gold-bearing pyrite in the pore space between grains. The Betze-Post mine and the Gold Quarry mine on the Carlin Trend are two of the largest of the disseminated gold deposits in Nevada. Similar deposits, but not as large, have been found in China, Iran, and Macedonia [42].

Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): In this rock, a pyrite cube has dissolved (as seen with the negative “corner” impression in the rock), leaving behind small specks of gold.

Non-Magmatic Geochemical Processes

Geochemical processes that occur at or near the surface without the aid of magma also concentrate metals, but to a lesser degree than hydrothermal processes. One of the main reactions is redox, short for reduction/oxidation chemistry, which has to do with the amount of available oxygen in a system. Places where oxygen is plentiful, as in the atmosphere today, are considered oxidizing environments, while oxygen-poor places are considered reducing environments. Uranium deposits are an example of where redox concentrated the metal. Uranium is soluble in oxidizing groundwater environments and precipitates as uraninite when encountering reducing conditions. Many of the deposits across the Colorado Plateau, such as in Moab, Utah, were formed by this method [43].

Figure \(\PageIndex{9}\): Underground uranium mine near Moab, Utah.

Redox reactions were also responsible for the creation of banded iron formations (BIFs), which are interbedded layers of iron oxide--hematite and magnetite, chert, and shale beds. These deposits formed early in the Earth’s history as the atmosphere was becoming oxygenated. Cycles of oxygenating iron-rich waters initiated precipitation of the iron beds. Because BIFs are generally Precambrian in age, happening at the event of atmospheric oxygenation, they are only found in some of the older exposed rocks in the United States, such as in the upper peninsula of Michigan and northeastern Minnesota [44].

Deep, saline, connate fluids (trapped in the pore spaces), within sedimentary basins may be highly metalliferous. When expelled outward and upward as basin sediments compacted, these fluids formed lead and zinc deposits in limestone by replacing or filling open spaces, such as caves and faults, and in sandstone by filling pore spaces. The most famous are called Mississippi Valley-type deposits [44]. Also known as carbonate-hosted replacement deposits, they are large deposits of galena and sphalerite (lead and zinc ores respectively) that form from hot fluids ranging from 100°C to 200°C (212°F to 392°F). Although they are named for occurrences along the Mississippi River Valley in the United States, they are found worldwide.

Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\): Map of Mississippi-Valley type ore deposits.

Sediment-hosted copper deposits occurring in sandstones, shales, and marls are enormous in size and their contained resources are comparable to porphyry copper deposits. These were most likely formed diagenetically by groundwater fluids in highly-permeable rocks [45]. Well-known examples are the Kupferschiefer in Europe, which has an areal coverage of more than 500,000 km², and the Zambian Copper Belt in Africa.

Soils and mineral deposits that are exposed at the surface experience deep and intense weathering, which can form surficial deposits. Bauxite, an ore of aluminum, is preserved in karst topography and laterites, which are soils formed in wet tropical environments [46]. Soils containing aluminum concentrate minerals, such as feldspar, and ferromagnesian minerals in igneous and metamorphic rocks, undergo chemical weathering processes that concentrate the metals. Ultramafic rocks that undergo weathering form nickel-rich soils, and when the magnetite and hematite in banded iron formations undergo weathering, they form goethite, a friable mineral that is easily mined for its iron content.

Figure \(\PageIndex{11}\): A sample of bauxite. Note the unweathered igneous rock in the center.

Surficial Physical Processes

At the Earth’s surface, mass wasting and moving water can cause hydraulic sorting, which forces high-density minerals to concentrate. When these minerals are concentrated in streams, rivers, and beaches, they are called placer deposits, and occur in modern sands and ancient lithified rocks [47]. Native gold, native platinum, zircon, ilmenite, rutile, magnetite, diamonds, and other gemstones can be found in placers. Humans have mimicked this natural process to recover gold manually by gold panning and by mechanized means such as dredging.

Figure \(\PageIndex{12}\): Heavy mineral layers (dark) in a quartz sand beach deposit in India.

Environmental Impacts of Metallic Mineral Mining

The primary impact of metallic mineral mining comes from the mining itself, including disturbing the land surface, covering landscapes with tailing impoundments (piles of waste rock material after processing mined rocks), and increasing mass wasting by accelerating erosion [48]. In addition, many metal deposits contain pyrite, an uneconomic sulfide mineral, that when placed on waste dumps, generates acid rock drainage (ARD) during weathering. In oxygenated water, sulfides such as pyrite react and undergo complex reactions to release metal ions and hydrogen ions, which lowers pH to highly acidic levels. Mining and processing of mined materials typically increase the surface area to volume ratio in the material, causing chemical reactions to occur even faster than would occur naturally. If not managed properly, these reactions may lead to acidification of streams and groundwater plumes that carry dissolved toxic metals. In mines where limestone is a waste rock or carbonate minerals like calcite or dolomite are present, their acid-neutralizing potential helps reduce acid rock drainage. Although this is a natural process too, it is very important to isolate mine dumps and tailings from oxygenated water, both to prevent the sulfides from dissolving and subsequently percolating the sulfate-rich water into waterways. Industry has taken great strides to prevent contamination in recent decades, but earlier mining projects are still causing problems with local ecosystems.

Figure \(\PageIndex{13}\): Acid mine drainage in the Rio Tinto, Spain.

Nonmetallic Mineral Deposits

While receiving much less attention, nonmetallic mineral resources (also known as industrial minerals) are just as vital to ancient and modern society as metallic minerals. The most basic of these is building stone. Limestone, travertine, granite, slate, and marble are common building stones and have been quarried for centuries. Even today, building stones from slate roof tiles to granite countertops are very popular. Especially pure limestone is ground up, processed, and reformed as plaster, cement, and concrete. Some nonmetallic mineral resources are not mineral specific; nearly any rock or mineral can be used. This is generally called aggregate and is used in concrete, roads, and foundations. Gravel is one of the more common aggregates.

Figure \(\PageIndex{14}\): Carrara marble quarry in Italy, source to famous sculptures like Michelangelo’s David.

Evaporites

Evaporite deposits form in restricted basins, such as the Great Salt Lake in Utah or the Dead Sea along Israel and Jordan, where water evaporates faster than it recharges [49]. As the waters evaporate, soluble minerals are concentrated and become supersaturated, at which point they precipitate from the now highly-saline waters. If these conditions persist for long stretches of time, thick deposits of rock salt, rock gypsum and other minerals can accumulate.

Figure \(\PageIndex{15}\): Salt-covered plain known as the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah.

Evaporite minerals, such as halite, are used in our food as common table salt. Salt was a vitally important food preservative and economic resource before refrigeration was developed. While still used in food, halite is now mainly mined as a chemical agent, water softener, or a de-icer for roads. Gypsum is a common nonmetallic mineral used as a building material; it is the main component of drywall. It is also used as a fertilizer. Other evaporites include sylvite--potassium chloride, and bischofite--magnesium chloride, both of which are used in agriculture, medicine, food processing, and other applications. Potash, a group of highly soluble potassium-bearing evaporite minerals, is used as a fertilizer. In hyper-arid locations, even more rare and more complex evaporites, like borax, trona, ulexite, and hanksite, are mined. They can be found in places such as Searles Dry Lake and Death Valley, California, and in ancient evaporite deposits of the Green River Formation in Utah and Wyoming.

Figure \(\PageIndex{16}\): Hanksite, Na₂₂K(SO₄)₉(CO₃)₂Cl, one of the few minerals that is considered a carbonate and a sulfate.

Phosphorus

Phosphorus is an essential element that occurs in the mineral apatite, which is found in trace amounts in common igneous rocks. Phosphorite rock, which is formed in sedimentary environments in the ocean [50], contains abundant apatite and is mined to make fertilizer. Without phosphorus, life as we know it is not possible. Phosphorus is a major component of bone and a key component of DNA. Bone ash and guano are natural sources of phosphorus.

Figure \(\PageIndex{17}\): Apatite from Mexico.

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