Jamey Jones has been helping lead the federal government’s effort to map the nation for critical minerals for about a year and says the data gaps are glaring.
“Not only are we undermapped as a nation, but the data that we have doesn’t even always tell us where these critical minerals are,” Jones, who coordinates research for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, or Earth MRI, told POLITICO’s E&E News.
“Things like rare earth elements, for example, we don’t even know exactly where those things are in geologic environments, because they’ve never been a focus more broadly,” Jones said.
Jones and his colleagues have been tasked with changing that. He’s part of a small federal team leading Earth MRI — an effort to identify geologic formations across the country that could contain critical minerals, using aircraft, radar and land surveys.
