The US Geological Survey (USGS) has invited states to compete for $5 million in cooperative agreements to find critical minerals needed to drive the US economy in the materials left over from mining at active and legacy sites.

The USGS is partnering with state geological surveys to modernize our understanding of critical minerals in the US, both below ground and above ground in mine waste, and this competitive funding will help us get there. Minerals, such as germanium, are essential for high-performance computer chips used in applications that weren’t even dreamed of when old mines closed. Germanium often occurs with zinc in ore, and it might have been left behind in mine waste when zinc ore was processed.

—Jamey Jones, science coordinator for the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI)

The cooperative agreements are offered through Earth MRI, a partnership with state geological surveys, private companies, academia and other state and federal agencies.

Through this funding, Earth MRI will provide science to evaluate the potential to extract valuable minerals from mine waste. This $5-million funding opportunity supports USGS efforts to build a national mine-waste inventory and characterize mine waste at mine sites across the nation. It also supports partnering with state geological surveys to plan Earth MRI data acquisition.

Mine waste is the material left over after mining. It consists of tailings, the material that remains after mined ore is milled and concentrated, as well as waste rock and other materials that were removed to get to the ore or left behind during ore processing.

Some critical minerals, such as rare earth elements, are known to occur alongside more commonly mined minerals like iron or nickel. Because of this, mine wastes are now being revisited to see if the waste has potential for critical-mineral commodities that were not a primary product of the original mining. Understanding what is in mine waste also helps identify potential hazards of reprocessing it to recover the critical minerals and other valuable commodities and opportunities for remediation.

For example, the USGS revisited legacy iron mines in the Adirondack Mountains of New York to determine if rare earth elements might occur there. Results indicated significant potential that merits further exploration, especially for rare earth elements.

Since 2018, Earth MRI has focused new data collection in parts of the nation with known or suspected critical mineral potential, significantly increasing high-quality data coverage and geologic mapping across large regions.