Vi lever i en mineralbaseret verden. Det er blevet sagt, at “hvis du ikke kan dyrke det, skal du mine det”. Faktisk er stort set alt, hvad vi bruger til daglig, fremstillet af jordens mineralressourcer. Mineralske råvarer giver os vores basale behov – energi, infrastruktur, transport, teknologi og meget mere.
I EGS håndteres dette emne i ekspertgruppen for Mineral Resources.
En række europæiske og regionale projekter er blevet udført i løbet af de sidste årtier for at løse mineralressourcerelaterede spørgsmål. GeoERA øgede kendskabet til mineralressourcer væsentligt.
GeoERA-projekter:
- MINTELL4EU (Mineral Intelligence for Europe)
- FRAME (Forecasting and Assessing Europe’s Strategic Raw Materials needs)
- MINDeSEA (Seabed Mineral Deposits in European Seas: Metallogeny and Geological Potential for Strategic and Critical Raw Materials)
- EuroLithos (European Ornamental stone resources)
Andre mineralressource-projekter
- RESEERVE (Mineral Potential of the Eastern and South-Eastern Europe Region)
- ORAMA (Optimising data collection for Primary and Secondary raw materials)
- SCRREEN og SCRREEN 2 (Solutions for Critical Raw Materials – a European Expert Network)
- Minerals4EU (Minerals Intelligence Network for Europe)
- EURare (Development of a sustainable exploitation scheme for Europe’s Rare Earth ore deposits)
- ProSUM (Prospecting Secondary Raw Materials in the Urban mine and Mining wastes)
- ProMine (Nano-particle products from new mineral resources in Europe)
- MICA (Mineral Intelligence Capacity Analysis)
- Geo-Cradle (Coordinating and integRating state-of-the-art Earth Observation Activities in the regions of North Africa, Middle East, and Balkans and Developing Links with GEO related initiatives towards GEOSS)