Toward an effective global green economy: International Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative (CMMI)

Critical minerals can be defined as mineral commodities that are essential for economic or techological development but have significant supply risk owing to geological, technological or political factors. Geoscience Australia, along with the United States Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Canada, have entered into a joint project, the Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative, to decrease this supply risk through a better understanding of geological controls on the distribution and deportment of critical minerals in mineral systems. This project will improve this understanding through (1) documentation of the concentration of critical minerals in ores, (2) development of mineral deposit/system classification that will enable assessment of system- and deposit-scale analysis of these concentration data, and (3) development of models to predict and model mineral potential of major and critical commodities in mineral systems, including basin-hosted, iron oxide-copper-gold and porphyry epithermal systems, at the global, craton, province and district scales. These new data and understandings will reduce the supply risk for critical minerals and enhance discovery of these and related minerals world-wide.