Exploration Geochemistry: New Challenges of Critical Raw Materials

Critical Raw Materials are substances with a risk of supply for industry in Europe, and the Critical Raw Materials (CRM) Act recommends that 10% of the supply of Critical Raw Materials to the European industry needs to be produced within Europe. Therefore, geochemistry is the method used to identify these materials, both in superficial rocks or drill cores; stream sediments; soils; and heavy mineral concentrates of areas that potentially can host these mineralisations. Exploration geochemistry technique has evolved since the middle of the 20th century, increasing the number of chemical elements analyzed simultaneously and decreasing the detection limits while at the same time QC/QA increased. Advancements in the methods of chemical analysis techniques to obtain more chemical elements and different extractions, such as, weak extractions, and electrochemical methods apart from the traditional geochemistry of rocks, soils and sediments, achieved better results and reflect the chemical concentrations below the surface. At the same time, there is a need to use more efficiently the legacy data through harmonization or level different campaigns to use high density campaigns at a regional scale, while the use of mineral chemistry to further study the processes leading to mineralisations.

Innovative geochemistry applied to mineral exploration is therefore the goal of this Research Topic and it can include lithogeochemistry, soil or sediment geochemistry, hidrogeochemistry, biogeochemistry as well as innovative techniques to handle the geochemical data, new or legacy data.

Innovative data treatment and predictive mapping using multivariate statistics and Artificial Intelligence algorithms (AI), which uses geochemistry with other data from geophysics, geology, and exploration studies using newly acquired data or legacy data, can help deal with complex and irregular data structures, by capturing spatial relationships and anisotropies in mineralization patterns. Harmonization of legacy data, levelling and mapping at a regional scale can help to use high resolution geochemical data that will improve the predictive mapping and avoid empty spaces that decrease the detail of the predictive maps and make the legacy data more useful for modern mineral exploration and give an indication of CRM not yet analysed through the indicator elements.

This Research Topic welcomes Original Research and review articles including, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Exploration of Critical Raw materials of Europe using geochemistry data.

• Exploration geochemistry of newly acquired data or legacy data, Statistics treatment of geochemical data, machine learning data treatment

• Mineral resources using geochemistry and geology along with other data such as geophysics, mineral chemistry, petrology, etc.

• Chemical analysis applied to exploration with different matrices such as soils, sediments, plants, superficial and groundwater, rocks.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review

Keywords: Geochemistry, Exploration, Mineral Resources, Data, Statistics, Artificial intelligence algorithms

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.