As mentioned above, the distribution of commercially significant mineral deposits, the economic factors associated with their recovery, and the estimates of available reserves constitute the basic concerns of economic geologists. Because continued industrial development is heavily dependent on mineral resources, their work is crucial to modern society.
It has long been known that certain periods of Earth history were especially favourable for the concentration of specific types of minerals. Copper, zinc, nickel, and gold are important in Archean rocks; magnetite and hematite are concentrated in early Proterozoic banded-iron formations; and there are economic Proterozoic uranium reserves in conglomerates. These mineral deposits and a variety of others that developed throughout the Phanerozoic Eon can be related to specific types of plate-tectonic environments. Among the latter are copper, lead, and zinc in intracontinental rifts. An interesting discovery has been the remarkable concentrations of gold, iron, zinc, and copper in brine pools and sulfide-rich muds in the Red Sea and in the Salton Sea in southern California. In many countries copper, nickel, and chromium deposits occur in ophiolite complexes obducted onto the continents from the ocean floor; porphyry copper and molybdenum deposits are found in association with granodioritic intrusions; and tungsten and tin deposits occur in many granites. The correlation of these associations and distributions with periods of Earth history, on the one hand, and plate-tectonic settings, on the other, have enabled regional metallogenetic provinces to be defined, which have proved helpful in the search for ore deposits.
During the 20th century the exploitation of mineral deposits was so intense that serious depletion of many resources was predicted. Mercury reserves, for example, are particularly low. To deal with this problem, it has become necessary to mine deposits having smaller and smaller workable grades, a trend well illustrated by the copper mining industry, which now extracts copper from rocks with grades as low as 0.2 percent.
Investigators have discovered a major potential metallic source on the deep ocean floor, where there are large concentrations of manganese-rich nodules along with minor amounts of copper, nickel, and cobalt. Such concentrations are especially abundant in three sections of the Pacific Ocean—the area near Hawaii, that northeast of New Zealand, and that west of Central America.
Earthquake prediction and control
No natural event is as destructive over so large an area in so short a time as an earthquake. Throughout the centuries earthquakes have been responsible not only for millions of deaths but also for tremendous damage to property and the natural landscape. If major earthquakes could be predicted, it would be possible to evacuate population centres and take other measures that could minimize the loss of life and perhaps reduce damage to property as well. For this reason earthquake prediction has become a major concern of seismologists in the United States, Russia, Japan, and China.
World seismicity patterns show that earthquakes tend to occur along active plate boundaries where there is subduction (Japan) or strike-slip motion (California) and along strike-slip faults (as in China, where they are the result of the northward migration of India into Asia). Investigators agree that much more has to be learned about the physical properties of rocks in fault zones before they are able to make use of changes in these properties to predict earthquakes, though the use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) at satellite ground stations over the years is providing quantitative data on a millimetre scale concerning the relative movement of crustal blocks across seismic faults. Recent research has suggested that rocks may become strained shortly before an earthquake and affect such observable properties of the Earth’s crust as seismic wave velocity and radon concentration. Leveling surveys and tiltmeter measurements have revealed that deformation in the fault zone just prior to an earthquake may cause changes in ground level and, in certain cases, variations in groundwater level. Also, some investigators have reported changes in the electric resistivity and remanent magnetization of rocks as precursory phenomena.
Since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, seismic activity along the nearby San Andreas Fault has been closely monitored. It has been observed that numerous semicontinuous microearthquakes have occurred along some sections of the fault. These small quakes seem to release built-up strain and thus prevent large earthquakes. By contrast, intervening sections of the fault are apparently locked and thus manifest no microshocks. Consequently, seismic strain accumulating in these locked sections is expected to be released one day in a major quake.
Seismological research includes the study of earthquakes caused by human activities, such as impounding water behind high dams, injecting fluids into deep wells, excavating mines, and detonating underground nuclear explosions. In all of these cases except for deep mining, seismologists have found that the induction mechanism most likely involves the release of elastic strain, just as with earthquakes of tectonic origin. Studies of artificially induced quakes suggest that one possible method of controlling natural earthquakes is to inject fluids into fault zones so as to release strain energy.
Seismologists have done much to explain the characteristics of ground motions recorded in earthquakes. Such information is required to predict ground motions in future earthquakes, thereby enabling engineers to design earthquake-resistant structures. The largest percentage of the deaths and property damage that result from an earthquake is attributable to the collapse of buildings, bridges, and other man-made structures during the violent shaking of the ground. An effective way of reducing the destructiveness of earthquakes, therefore, is to build structures capable of withstanding intense ground motions.
Other areas of application
The fields of engineering, environmental, and urban geology are broadly concerned with applying the findings of geologic studies to construction engineering and to problems of land use. The location of a bridge, for example, involves geologic considerations in selecting sites for the supporting piers. The strength of geologic materials such as rock or compacted clay that occur at the sites of the piers should be adequate to support the load placed on them. Engineering geology is concerned with the engineering properties of geologic materials, including their strength, permeability, and compactability, and with the influence of these properties on the selection of locations for buildings, roads and railroads, bridges, dams, and other major civil features.
Urban geology involves the application of engineering geology and other fields of geology to environmental problems in urban areas. Environmental geology is generally concerned with those aspects of geology that touch on the human environment. Environmental and urban geology deal in large measure with those aspects of geology that directly influence land use. These include the stability of sites for buildings and other civil features, sources of water supply (hydrogeology), contamination of waters by sewage and chemical pollutants, selection of sites for burial of refuse so as to minimize pollution by seepage, and locating the source of geologic building materials, including sand, gravel, and crushed rock. Since the late 1990s the importance of environmental geology has increased considerably in most developed countries as societies became aware of the environmental impact of humankind.
John W. Harbaugh Brian Frederick Windley