10 RES OUR CES Ho w ar e c oal and miner als f ound In order to maintain a national reserve base geologists are con tinuously looking for new mineral deposits The exploration pro cess undertaken to fnd these elusive deposits can be compared to searching for a needle in a haystack E xploration often starts with literature and feld investigation of a region covering up to 100000 square miles Bit b y bit the explo ration team narrows this region down to small er target areas that are considered highly favorable for mineral resource deposits T ools such as remote sensing satellites help identify favorable areas in relatively inaccessible places Global p ositioning s ystems GPS aid in pinpointing resource locations Other tools of the modern explorationist include A ir b o r n e m a g n e t o m e t e r s t o d e t e c t m in e r a l s t h a t a f e c t t h e e a r t h s m a g n e t i c f e l d G e o c h e m i c a l p r os p e c t in g u s in g a n a l ys e s o f w a t e r s o i l a n d v e ge t a t io n t o p in p o in t hi d d e n c o n c e n t r a t i o n s o f m in o r e l e men t s a n d E l ec t r i ca l e l ec t r o m a gne t i c s e i s m i c a n d r a di o m et r i c t e c h n iq u e s Once a promising site is identifed core samples are taken and submitted to chemi cal analysis Xray microanalysis and other testing If all of these tests indicate an eco nomically viable deposit a company can begin to decide if a mine should be con structed Millions of dollars and upwards of fve years are spent on a single exploration campaign that may or may not end in mineral production Unlike most minerals the location and quantity of US coal reserves are fairly well known As a result coal ex ploration eforts are usually focused not on where coal deposits are but rather on the geology and composi tion of the reserves The tools and techniques used to gather and utilize these data range from the traditional to the cutting edge As with minerals exploration they include drilling for core samples to reveal cross sec tions of the underlying rock and coal strata laboratory analyses surveying and mapping all of which help engineers plan the mines design and production plan Ho w ar e miner als named F or some c ommon miner als such as quar tz and gypsum the names ar e ancient and the pr ecise ori gins ar e unkno wn Ne w er miner als ar e named b y the miner alogist who fr st de scribes them in print and ar e of t en named f or a per son or plac e US Shar e of W orldwide Nonf err ous Explor ation Spending 2019 S P Global P acicSE A sia 4 La tin A mer ica 28 C anada 14 A fr ica 12 R est of W or ld 16 A ustr alia 16 U S 10 GPS sat ellit e