Topic 2: Part 1

Question 1

What are the two categories of resources?

Answer 1

Renewable: Replenished over short time scales

Non-renewable: Exist on Earth in a fixed quantity, replenished over thousands to millions of years.

Question 2

What are mineral resources?

Answer 2

Natural concentrations that result from physical and chemical concentrations active in Earth’s crust. There are two main types of mineral resources. Metallic and Non-metallic. Metallic mineral resources are also called ores.

Question 3

What do we use minerals for?

Answer 3

Non-metallic minerals are used in industry, agriculture, and construction.
Metallic minerals are used in cars and phones.

Question 4

What are the two types of metallic minerals?

Answer 4

Abundant: Excess of .1% by weight in average continental crust.
Scarce metals: Less than .1% of weight in average continental crust. Often concentrated in sulfide deposits.

Question 5

How do mineral deposits form?

Answer 5

One or more geologic processes.

Question 6

What controls the distribution of resources on Earth? How?

Answer 6

Plate tectonics because it controls the position of the continents and the geologic processes responsible for forming, modifying, and destroying Earth resources.

Question 7

What are some processes that can form and concentrate mineral resources?

Answer 7

1. Subsurface processes
   Igneous and metamorphic processes
2. Surface processes
   Weathering and physical and chemical sedimentation
3. Shallow subsurface and diagenetic processes
4. Meteor impact and mantle melt
   This is why some mineral resources are widespread, because they can result from multiple processes. Others are scarce and localized because there is only one process that allows them to form.

Question 8

What are igneous rocks used for?

Answer 8

Can be used as building materials or crushed stone. A non-metallic resource.

Question 9

Which metamorphic processes create mineral resources?

Answer 9

Regional (mountain building) and contact metamorphism.

Question 10

What are skarns?

Answer 10

Ca-bearing silicate rocks that commonly contain valuable ores. Form at the contact zone between a felsic igneous intrusion and carbonate rocks due to reactions with heated fluids given off by the cooling intrusion of fluids within the country rock.

Question 11

What is metasomatism?

Answer 11

Fluids mix in contact zone, dissolve carbonate minerals and convert carbonate rocks to skarn deposits.