CRITICAL MINERALSGeological Mapping Project Supports Critical Mineral Explorations, Enhances Public Safety in the Southeast
A key focus of a new USGS mapping project is to identify where critical minerals vital to the economy and national security might be located. As demand for rare earth elements and other critical minerals grows for use in technology, energy, and defense sectors, this project can provide vital data that helps the U.S. secure domestic sources of critical minerals, thus reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign sources.
Deep beneath the southeastern U.S. lies a hidden world of critical minerals and potential earthquake risks. A U.S. Geological Survey geologic mapping project is dedicated to uncovering these secrets, with the goal of enriching the nation’s geological understanding and improving public safety.
The project aims to create detailed geologic maps of the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line, a geologic boundary from New Jersey to Georgia. This area features rapids in streams and rivers, with higher land to the northwest. The Fall Line marks a 10-mile-wide area between the hard metamorphic rock of the Piedmont to the west and the softer sedimentary rock of the Coastal Plain to the east.
These new geologic maps will fill in knowledge gaps in many places in the southeastern U.S. that have not been mapped in detail before.
“New technologies and mapping techniques allow us to create more accurate maps of what lies underground, providing crucial geologic information, such as where important minerals could be or where earthquake risks are greater,” said Mark Carter, a USGS research geologist and project lead with the USGS Florence Bascom Geoscience Center.
A key focus of this mapping project is to inform State Geological Surveys, private industry, and key decision-makers where critical minerals vital to the economy and national security might be located.
As demand for rare earth elements and other critical minerals grows for use in technology, energy, and defense sectors, this project can provide vital data that helps the U.S. secure domestic sources of critical minerals, thus reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign sources.
“Critical minerals are needed for almost every part of modern life,” Carter explained. “Projects like this one can make the U.S. more self-reliant by helping us find where these resources are.”
Critical minerals like titanium are found in sandy deposits along the coastal plain, originating from weathered rocks in and around the Appalachians and washed downstream. While experts know the current locations of many of these sandy deposits, their original sources in Piedmont and Blue Ridge bedrock upstream are still unknown. Discovering the origin of these minerals is important because there may be large amounts of valuable resources yet to be uncovered, added Carter.
