Introduction to Mineral Exploration

This new, up dated edition of Introduction to Mineral Exploration provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of mineral exploration.


* Covers not only the nature of mineral exploration but also considers other factors essential to successful exploration, from target evaluation to feasibility studies for extraction and production.
* Includes six detailed case studies, selected for the range of different problems and considerations they present to the mineral explorationist.
* Features new chapters on handling mineral exploration data and a new case study on the exploration for diamonds.
* Essential reading for upper level undergraduates studying ore geology, mineral exploration, mining geology, coal exploration, and industrial minerals, as well as professional geologists.

Artwork from the book is available to instructors online at www.blackwellpublishing.com/moon.

Customer Reviews : by Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker"

This anthology begins with deskwork analysis of geologic maps and other information. From there, there are chapters on prefeasibility studies, remote sensing, geophysical methods, drilling programs, exploration geochemistry, etc. A series of chapters discuss case histories of exploration.

Financing is discussed, and a variety of technical information is presented. There is a glossary of common abbreviations, and illustrations on the use of statistics, as in the construction of borehole grids. There is also a helpful table of atypical colors that characterize many metallic compounds seen in outcrop (p. 80).

In evaluating different exploration techniques, John Milsom comments: "Geophysical interpretations are notoriously ambiguous but the gravity method does provide, at least in theory, a unique and unambiguous answer to one exploration question. If an anomaly is fully defined over the ground surface, the total gravitational flux it represents is proportional to the total excess mass of the source body." (pp. 134-135)

Very little attention is paid to the rare earth elements, considering their importance in recent years. However, there is data on the use of lanthanum as a tracer for geochemical exploration (p. 158), and cost-effective methods of analyzing REEs at background levels in geologic samples (p. 161).