Planning I/UCRC Colorado School of Mines: Center for Advanced Subsurface Earth Resource Models

Colorado School Of Mines, Golden CO

Investigators

Abstract

The Industry-University Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Subsurface Earth Resource Models is a collaborative effort between Colorado School of Mines and Virginia Tech that is focused on advancing the exploration/mining industry sector through the establishment of a cooperative industry-university-NSF partnership that conducts pre-competitive research and workforce development programs of benefit to both industry and academia. Minerals and metals are at the foundation of modern technology-based societies. Meeting national and global demands for earth resources represents a grand challenge for the future. The Center, for which this award provides funds to support a planning meeting between academia and industry, will develop an integrated approach to locating, characterizing, and visualizing mineral deposits and other earth resources to meet this grand challenge. The Center's objectives in developing novel technologies for increasing the chances of exploration success, reducing the cost of exploration failure, and advancing mining operations, will promote socio-economic prosperity and help in reducing the impact of mining on the environment. Workforce development, as an essential component of Center activities, will include student (graduate, undergraduate, and local community college) and industry employee participation in research activities and training opportunities. The Center will strengthen and promote cross-disciplinary discoveries, in geophysics, geochemistry, mineralogy, computational science, and statistics. Mining is inextricably linked to modern society's transition to a sustainable future, and research focused on increasing the chances of exploration success and reducing the cost of exploration failure provides tangible societal outcomes and benefits. The purpose and long-term vision of the Center for Advanced Subsurface Earth Resource Models for which the planning meeting made possible by this award is directed toward research challenges in the development of 3-D subsurface geologic models for mineral deposits, particularly as these models integrate diverse geoscience data to inform decision making and minimize geological risk. Four research thrusts are envisioned: (1) Development of novel geophysical and geochemical instrumentation, analysis, and interpretation methods for enhanced characterization of rock properties; (2) integration, scaling, and inversion of diverse geological, petrophysical, and geophysical data types of dissimilar spatial resolution and distribution to identify and characterize subsurface earth resources; (3) development of value of information methodologies for reducing risk associated with decision making; and (4) computational imaging and visualization, and development of graphical and exploratory data analysis solutions and visualization tools. Achieving this broad vision requires collaboration of economic geologists, geophysicists, statisticians, and computational mathematicians. Colorado School of Mines' partnership with Virginia Tech provides the basis for leading 3-D global subsurface earth resource modeling. The Colorado School of Mines has assembled an interdisciplinary research team with specialties in mineral and rock chemical and physical properties, economic geology, mining engineering, spatial and spatio-temporal geostatistics, quantification of uncertainty, gravity and electromagnetic methods in resource exploration, inversion modeling, and high performance computing. These specialties complement Virginia Tech's core competencies in inverse theory, seismology, and computational imaging. The Center's activities will transform the way geoscience data are used in the exploration and mining industry sector, beginning with the initial exploratory stage and continuing through mine closure and environmental remediation. In this regard, the objective of the planning meeting is to bring the exploration and mining industry sector and the faculty teams at the Colorado School of Mines and Virginia Tech together to determine a mutual research agenda and to explore industry commitment to the Center. Because the success of the Center depends on the long-term vested interest and involvement of industry partners, the planning meeting will focus on listening to the needs of the companies and together creating a research and business plan that will define the Center's vision.