This map shows the locations and status, as at 30 June 2020, of Australian operating mines, mines under development, mines on care and maintenance and resource deposits associated with critical minerals. Developing mines are deposits where the project has a positive feasibility study, development has commenced or all approvals have been received. Mines under care and maintenance and resource deposits are based on known resource estimations and may produce critical minerals in the future. The critical mineral deposits on this map may not be comprehensive for all commodities. For the purposes of this map, critical minerals are defined as minerals and elements (solid and gaseous) that are vital for modern technology and whose supply may be at risk of disruption. The Australian critical minerals list comprises antimony, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, helium, indium, lithium, magnesium, niobium, platinum group elements, rare earth elements, rhenium, scandium, tantalum, titanium, tungsten, vanadium and zirconium. These commodities are coloured by mineral groupings on the map.

This map shows the locations and status, as at 31 December 2021, of Australian operating mines, mines under development, mines on care and maintenance and resource deposits associated with critical minerals. Developing mines are deposits where the project has a positive feasibility study, development has commenced or all approvals have been received. Mines under care and maintenance and resource deposits are based on known resource estimations and may produce critical minerals in the future. The critical mineral deposits on this map may not be comprehensive for all commodities. For the purposes of this map, critical minerals are defined as minerals and elements (solid and gaseous) that are vital for modern technology and whose supply may be at risk of disruption. The Australian critical minerals list comprises aluminium (high-purity alumina), antimony, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, helium, indium, lithium, magnesium, niobium, platinum group elements, rare earth elements, rhenium, scandium, silicon (high-purity silica), tantalum, titanium, tungsten, vanadium and zirconium. These commodities are coloured by mineral groupings on the map.

This map shows the locations and status of Australian operating mines, mines under development, mines on care and maintenance and mineral deposits associated with a critical mineral resource in 2023. Operating mines include projects that have reported a critical mineral resource, but do not necessarily produce critical minerals. Developing mines are deposits where the project has a positive feasibility study, development has commenced or all approvals have been received. Mines under care and maintenance and mineral deposits are those projects with a known critical mineral resource estimate that may produce critical minerals in the future. For the purposes of this map, critical minerals are defined as minerals and elements that are vital for modern technology and whose supply may be at risk of disruption. As at December 2023, the Australian critical minerals list comprised antimony, arsenic, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, cobalt, fluorine, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, high purity alumina, indium, lithium, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, niobium, platinum group elements, rare earth elements, rhenium, selenium, silicon (high purity silica/quartz), scandium, tantalum, tellurium, titanium, tungsten, vanadium and zirconium. In February 2024, the Australian Government updated the Australian critical minerals list to include nickel. The fifth edition of this map includes the location and status of Australian nickel mines and deposits in 2023. These commodities are coloured by mineral groupings on the map.

Although critical minerals (CMs) are currently produced from existing mines, their distributions in many mineral systems are, in many cases, poorly known, raising the possibility that CMs are not fully recovered from some ores. The Critical Minerals in Ores (CMiO) database, compiled by Geoscience Australia, United States Geological Survey, Geological Survey of Canada, and Geological Survey of Queensland as part of the Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative, contains high-quality geochemical data from global ore deposits classified using a common framework, enabling global comparison. Using CMiO and other data, we have undertaken preliminary investigations on distributions of CMs in mineral systems including porphyry Cu (PCu), iron oxide-Cu-Au (IOCG), iron oxide-apatite (IOA), rare earth element (REE), and Zn-dominated systems. The PCu systems are enriched in Re, Pt, Pd, Se, and Te relative to the continental crust. At the Pebble (USA) PCu deposit, Re and Se are enriched in Cu ore zones; whereas Te is enriched immediately outside these zones. Although generally not recovered, alkalic PCu deposits (e.g., Galore Creek, Canada; Cadia, Australia) can be enriched in Pd and Pt. Cobalt and some REEs occur in IOCG systems, with Co enriched in magnetite-dominant IOCG systems (e.g., Ernest Henry, Australia; Kwyjibo, Canada), and REEs enriched in IOA (e.g., Pea Ridge, USA) and hematite-dominant IOCG systems (e.g., Olympic Dam, Australia). The enrichment of individual REEs depends strongly on mineral system type. In magmatic and metasomatic systems, light REEs (Ce to Sm) and Y are enriched in hematite-rich IOCG, IOA and carbonatite (e.g., Saint-Honoré, Canada) deposits, whereas heavy REEs (Eu to Lu) are enriched in deposits associated with peralkaline magmatism (e.g., Strange Lake, Canada). Unconformity-related REE (e.g., Maw, Canada; Wolverine, Australia) and ionic clay (e.g., Koopamurra, Australia) deposits also tend to be heavy REE-rich, whereas shale-hosted (e.g., SBH, Canada) and phosphorite (e.g., Ardmore, Australia) deposits can be enriched in heavy and/or light REEs. Zinc deposits are important sources of Ga, Ge, and In. Assessment of the distribution of these CMs in Zn deposits suggest that Ge is concentrated in deposits formed from low temperature, oxidized fluids (Mississippi Valley-type: Tres Marias, Mexico; sediment-hosted massive sulfides: Red Dog, USA), whereas In is enriched in deposits formed from higher temperature, reduced fluids (volcanic-hosted massive sulfide: Kidd Creek, Canada; skarn: Isabel, Australia). These examples demonstrate the utility of the CMiO and other datasets for characterizing CMs distribution in individual ore deposit and predicting CMs potentials of mineral systems. This abstract was presented at the Joint Annual Meeting of the Geological Association of Canada (GAC), Mineralogical Association of Canada (MAC) and Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits, Sudbury, Canada May 2023

<div>Alkaline and related rocks are a relatively rare class of igneous rocks worldwide. Alkaline rocks encompass a wide range of rock types and are mineralogically and geochemically diverse. They are typically though to have been derived by generally small to very small degrees of partial melting of a wide range of mantle compositions. As such these rocks have the potential to convey considerable information on the evolution of the Earth’s mantle (asthenosphere and lithosphere), particularly the role of metasomatism which may have been important in their generation or to which such rocks may themselves have contributed. Such rocks, by their unique compositions and or enriched source protoliths, also have considerable metallogenic potential, e.g., diamonds, Th, U, Zr, Hf, Nb, Ta, REEs. It is evident that the geographic occurrences of many of these rock types are also important, and may relate to presence of old cratons, craton margins or major lithospheric breaks. Finally, many alkaline rocks also carry with them mantle xenoliths providing a snapshot of the lithospheric mantle composition at the time of their emplacement.</div><div><br></div><div>Accordingly, although alkaline and related rocks comprise only a volumetrically minor component of the geology of Australia, they are of considerable importance to studies of lithospheric composition, evolution and architecture and to helping constrain the temporal evolution of the lithosphere, as well as more directly to metallogenesis and mineralisation.</div><div><br></div><div>This contribution presents data on the distribution and geology of Australian alkaline and related rocks of Proterozoic age. Proterozoic alkaline and related rocks are primarily restricted to the western two-thirds of the Australia continent, congruent with the distribution of Proterozoic rocks more generally. Proterozoic alkaline rock units are most abundant in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, with minor occurrences in South Australia, and the western regions of Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania.</div><div><br></div><div>The report and accompanying GIS document the distribution, age, lithology, mineralogy and other characteristics of these rocks (e.g., extrusive/intrusive, presence of mantle xenoliths, presence of diamonds), as well as references for data sources and descriptions. The report also reviews the nomenclature of alkaline rocks and classification procedures. GIS metadata are documented in the appendices.&nbsp;</div>

This web service delivers datasets produced by the Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative (CMMI), a collaboration between Geoscience Australia (GA), the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Data in this service includes geochemical analyses of over 7000 samples collected from or near mineral deposits from 60 countries, and mineral prospectivity models for clastic-dominated (Zn, Pb) and Mississippi Valley-type (Zn-Pb) deposits across Canada, the United States, and Australia.

This map shows the locations and status, as at 31 December 2022, of Australian operating mines, mines under development, mines on care and maintenance and resource deposits associated with critical minerals. Developing mines are deposits where the project has a positive feasibility study, development has commenced or all approvals have been received. Mines under care and maintenance and resource deposits are based on known resource estimations and may produce critical minerals in the future. The critical mineral deposits on this map may not be comprehensive for all commodities. For the purposes of this map, critical minerals are defined as minerals and elements (solid and gaseous) that are vital for modern technology and whose supply may be at risk of disruption. The Australian critical minerals list comprises aluminium (high-purity alumina), antimony, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, helium, indium, lithium, magnesium, niobium, platinum group elements, rare earth elements, rhenium, scandium, silicon (high-purity silica), tantalum, titanium, tungsten, vanadium and zirconium. These commodities are coloured by mineral groupings on the map.

The Australian Mine Waste database contains mine waste features including mine waste name, waste type, waste status, storage type and geographical location. It also includes relational links to the associated mineral deposit, the associated deposit commodities as well as mineral deposit models modified from the Critical Mineral Mapping Initiative mineral deposit classification scheme (Hofstra et al., 2021). Where available, additional information has been included such as structure type, volume and rehabilitation status. This data has been compiled from published references and public information such as company reports. The resource is accessible via the Geoscience Australia Portal (https://portal.ga.gov.au/persona/minewaste)

<div>High Purity Silica (HPS) is the principal raw material in the production of silicon used to manufacture high technology products including semiconductors and solar cells. Quartz (SiO2) is the most abundant silica mineral in the Earth’s crust; however, economic deposits of high purity quartz (HPQ; SiO2 >99.995%) are rare. Rapid acceleration towards reaching net zero emissions has seen a parallel increase in demand for the discovery of new HPS deposits for downstream processing. As a part of the Australian Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub, Geoscience Australia is addressing this demand by generating the first mineral systems model and accompanying national scale mineral potential map to help explorers accelerate discovery. Presentation for the 2024 AusIMM Critical Minerals Conference

<div>This A1 poster aims to introduce Year 3/4 and older students to the many ways that minerals and elements are used in our everyday lives. </div><div>&nbsp;6 key uses of 14 critical and strategic minerals are highlighted by colourful lines linking images. Students should take their time viewing the poster; they can follow the wiggly lines from minerals to product or vice versa and work out how many minerals link to each type of use.</div><div>&nbsp;The poster is also suitable for secondary students with the inclusion of a specific element name with each highlighted mineral plus the element symbol and atomic number.</div><div>&nbsp;The poster is intended to be a colourful rich stimulus to engage student interest in the resources from the ground used in our modern world.</div><div><br></div>