Metallic Mineral Resources : The Critical Components for a Sustainable Earth

Metallic Mineral Resources: The Critical Components for a Sustainable Earth introduces the heterogeneous distribution of metal resources as well as the industrial use of metals. The main chapters then work systematically through abundant metal systems, scarce critical metal systems, rare critical metal systems, trace critical metal systems, and precious metal systems. The book wraps with a close examination of temporal distribution of mineral resources and an insightful discussion of the future of mineral resources. Researchers and engineers in economic geology and mining and exploration industries will find themselves returning to this key reference for years to come.

• Describes how mineable and economic metal concentrations form and are preserved in the Earth’s upper crust
• Documents how they are discovered by systematic mineral exploration at a variety of scales
• Discusses how to educate the public on the scarcity of natural metal resources and the issues concerning the nexus between the energy transition and potential exhaustion of critical metals

Dr Daniel Müller graduated with a MSc in Mineralogy and Geoscience at the Johannes‐Gutenberg‐University Mainz, Germany, after serving for 3 years as First Lieutenant in the German Air Force (Luftwaffe). Subsequently, he obtained a PhD at the Key Centre for Strategic Mineral Deposits, University of Western Australia (UWA) in Perth, Australia, and a Habilitations Degree at the Institute for Mineralogy, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany. Daniel is an experienced geologist with 30 years exploring for base- and precious-metal mineralization with BHP Billiton, Citadel Resource Group, Coventry Resources, Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd, Ivanhoe Mines, North Limited, Placer Dome, and QPX throughout Africa, Asia, Australia, North and South America, and the Middle East. His exploration teams discovered additional gold resources at both Kanowna Belle Gold Mine, Australia, and at Jabal Shayban, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Daniel has published 18 research papers on gold and copper mineralization worldwide and the geophysical exploration of concealed gold deposits as well as a textbook on 'Potassic Igneous Rocks and Associated Gold-Copper Mineralization' in five editions with Springer. He has received the OPRS Scholarship of the Australian Government, the Evelyn and Ernest Havill Shacklock Scholarship of UWA, the Habilitation Scholarship of the German Research Council (DFG) as well as the Hesperian Press (1992) and Western Mining Postgraduate Awards (1993). Daniel is also a member of the Editorial Board of the journal 'Ore Geology Reviews'.

Professor David I. Groves gained his BSc Hons (1^st class) and PhD from the University of Tasmania and DSc from the University of Western Australia (UWA). He has carried out geological survey mapping and has acted as an exploration consultant but has spent most of his career as a pragmatic academic in which capacity he is now Emeritus Professor at UWA, Honorary Professor at the China University of Geosciences Beijing (CUGB), and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He has been awarded 13 medals and prizes for his research and has supervised 100 PhD and MSc students in a long career. He has benefitted from his mentors Professors Sam Carey and Mike Solomon who advised him “To disbelief if you can” and “You will never solve a problem by viewing it at too small a scale”, both the foundations of his success and advice that governments should heed! David could never have had such an eventful life without the support of his wife Suzanne and his extended family or been able to contribute to this book without input from geological colleagues, his former students, and association with Academician Jun Deng’s research group, particularly Drs Qingfei Wang and Liang Zhang, at CUGB through which he met Professor Santosh.

Professor M. Santosh is a Talent Professor at the CUGB, China, Honorary Professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia and Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Science, Kochi University, Japan. His degrees are PhD (Cochin University of Science and Technology, India), D.Sc. (Osaka City University, Japan) and D.Sc. (University of Pretoria, South Africa). He is the Founding Editor of Gondwana Research as well as the founding Secretary General of the International Association for Gondwana Research. He is also the Editorial Advisor of Geoscience Frontiers and Geosystems and Geoenvironment. His research fields include global tectonics, metallogeny and life evolution in the Early Earth.

He is co-author of the book ‘Continents and Supercontinents’ (Oxford University Press, 2004). He has been recipient of Thomson Reuters 2012 Research Front Award, and Thomson Reuters/Clarivate High Cited Researcher Award during the past ten years. The collaboration and partnership of Professor David Groves and Santosh have led to a series of publications related to metallogeny in relation to global tectonics as well as the book Mineral Systems, Earth Evolution, and Global Metallogeny (Elsevier, 2023).