Introduction to Mineral Exploration

By A.M. Evans

Ores and industrial minerals are the foundation of our manufacturing and construction industries. Therefore, mineral exploration is a key area of economic geology. It is also a more exacting science than previous textbooks on the subject would suggest, and it has been galvanised in recent years by the development of new techniques. Introduction to Mineral Exploration covers the nature of mineral exploration, including its economics, and the principal techniques employed in prospecting programs. However, it also goes further, to disucss the other factors and decisions essential to an exploration programme: target evaluation and pre-development studies. The book is written for senior undergraduates and professional geologists studying mineral exploration, mining geology, coal exploration, industrial mineralogy and ore geology. A distinctive feature of the book is the inclusion of six in-depth studies of deposit types, selected for their variety and the different geochemical, geophysical and other problems they present to the mineral prospector.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0632024275
• ISBN13: 9780632024278
• Release Date: December 1995
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.7" x 0.9" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

good update of previous books

This book makes good use of real case studies over a variety of commodities.I found it valuable as a graduate geologist and I believe it would be for undergraduates too.As with all multi author books ,some chapters are better written than others.The information on data and software does needs enlarging,to be really helpful -and the figures in this particular chapter would be much more valuable if they were in colour. Otherwise a good introductory text.

An Excellent Overview of Exploration Techniques, Primarily for Metals

This anthology begins with deskwork analysis of geologic maps and other information. From there, there are chapters on prefeasibility studies, remote sensing, geophysical methods, drilling programs, exploration geochemistry, etc. A series of chapters discuss case histories of exploration. Financing is discussed, and a variety of technical information is presented. There is a glossary of common abbreviations, and illustrations on the use of statistics, as in the construction of borehole grids. There is also a helpful table of atypical colors that characterize many metallic compounds seen in outcrop (p. 80). In evaluating different exploration techniques, John Milsom comments: "Geophysical interpretations are notoriously ambiguous but the gravity method does provide, at least in theory, a unique and unambiguous answer to one exploration question. If an anomaly is fully defined over the ground surface, the total gravitational flux it represents is proportional to the total excess mass of the source body." (pp. 134-135) Very little attention is paid to the rare earth elements, considering their importance in recent years. However, there is data on the use of lanthanum as a tracer for geochemical exploration (p. 158), and cost-effective methods of analyzing REEs at background levels in geologic samples (p. 161).