Природные ресурсы мира = World Natural Resource. Учебно-методическое пособие

The index of resource availability is associated with: Amount of natural resources within a certain territory

A class of natural resources (exhaustible or inexhaustible resources) Extraction scale/efficiency

Amount of population

The value of resource availability constantly changes and has an approximation owing to:

•Stocks of raw materials which are constantly corrected and updated

•Change of volumes of production also change over time

•Change of the amount of population over time

Questions

Aims and objectives of natural resource studies.

Why are natural resources considered as a spatial and temporal category?

What are the reasons of transition of primitive human communities to agriculture?

What are the main characteristics of the pre-agrarian, agrarian, industrial, post-industrial historical stages?

How does economic development influence the stage of development of natural resources?

What are the principals of classification of natural resources?

Please list the genetic types of natural resources.

What are the renewability categories of natural resources?

What are the ways to calculate the resource availability index?

What are the factors affecting the resource availability index?

Practical session

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CHAPTER II

MINERAL AND ENERGY RESOURCES

1.MINERAL RESOURCES

The concept of mineral resources

Classification of mineral resources

Ore minerals, ore deposits

Parameters of ore deposits

Classification of mineral deposits

Non-metallic group of minerals

Metallic group of minerals

Radioactive metals

Mineral resources of Russia

Minerals are naturally formed substance composed of one or more elements, e.g., lead (PbS), sphalerite (ZnS), etc.Mineral resources occur and accumulate in Earth's crust as a result of specific geologic processes and are distributed unevenly within the shallow crust. Reserve mineral resources represent the volume of resources that can be economically extracted using current mining technologies. The volume of reserves will always be less than the volume of resources.

Classification of mineral resources

Mineral resources can be divided into two major categories:

Metallic mineral resources and non metallic mineral resources

Liquid, solid, gaseous

Metallic minerals are:

 Ferrous metals (iron, manganese, chrome, titanium, vanadium)

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Non ferrous and rare metals (copper, lead, zinc, aluminum, nickel, cobalt, antimony, bismuth, tin, tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum, niobium, etc.)

Precious metals (gold, platinum, silver)

Nonmetallic minerals include:

Precious and colored stones (diamonds, emeralds, corundums, amber, etc.)

Mineral raw materials (rock salt, boron raw materials, fluorite, sodium sulfate, natural soda, arsenic raw materials, calcite)

Agrochemical raw materials (apatite, phosphorite, potassium salts, sulfuric raw materials, nitrogen raw materials)

Industrial raw materials (asbestos, magnesite, graphite, talc, barite, bentonite clays, kaolin, fire clays)

Building materials (limestones, marls, dolomites, clays, gypsum, anhydrite, facing and building stones, sand and gravel, feldspar, nepheline, glass sands, siliceous rocks)

Coal (brown, stone, anthracite) and combustible (oil) shale

Peat

Uranium, thorium

The availability of mineral resources is correlated with the land area: large countries have more minerals than small countries. Large nations such as Russia, China, the USA, Canada, Brazil are the world leaders in the production of a variety of mineral resources. While smaller states often benefit from localized deposits of individual minerals. For example, Morocco is among the world's largest exporters of phosphate rock used in fertilizers. Guinea is a principal source of bauxite (used in the production of aluminum).

Ore minerals, ore deposits

Often, different minerals occur together in a deposit and refer to as ore forming minerals. Ore minerals form as a result of geologic processes and often occur in isolated and localized rock masses. Such local concentrations are called mineral deposits. Starostin V.I. and Ignatov P.A. considered the concept ‘ore’ as natural, historical, technological and economic component and described it as ‘a natural or technogenic formation containing a valuable component in such concentrations ...

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and having such a structure, what makes its extraction cost-effective [19].

Parameters of ore deposits

Ore deposit characteristics can be considered in terms of different parameters:

Mining-technical (mining-geological) parameters (the conditions of ore deposits: water content of deposits, gas accumulation, physical and mechanical characteristics of ore bodies and enclosing rocks).

The relief, climate, infrastructure of the territory; the availability of building materials, energy, human sources; the cost of a useful component are geographical and economic parameters.

The value and quantity of utilized lands during the development of ore deposits, pollution of surface and groundwater, atmosphere, the possibility and types of land reclamation refer to the geo-ecological parameters of ore deposits.

Mineral resources are distributed unevenly within the shallow crust (table 2) [16].

Table 2

World mineral resources (according to V.I. Smirnov, et.al., 1986.)

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Magmatic mineral deposits concentrated in igneous rocks. A magmatic ore deposit is an accumulation of magmatic minerals. Some of these minerals are extremely rare and almost never encountered in common rocks, an example being alloys of the platinum metals; other minerals, such as magnetite, are common and can be seen in many thin sections. They form an ore deposit when they accumulate in large amounts and at unusually high concentrations [3].

Sedimentary mineral deposits are precipitated from a solution, typically sea water.

Metamorhogenic mineral deposits form in association with metamorphism;

Hydrothermal mineral deposits form in association with magma and water.

Classification of mineral resources

There were many attempts to classify mineral deposit made by such well-known geologists as V. Lindgren, V. Obruchev, Matthew Emmons, Paul Niggli, etc.. and developed classifications were conceptually different. The criteria used in classifications are:

o morphology or form of deposit (shape, size, attitude), o origin or source (magmatic: volcanic, metamorphic), o metal or commodity content (Cu, Pb-Zn, Au-Ag, etc.),

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o environmental physical-chemical conditions (T°, pressure, place of deposition: deep/shallow, etc.),

o processes of deposition (open space filling, replacement, crystal settling, evaporation, etc.)

V.I. Smirnov and V. Lindgren considered 3 groups of mineral deposits: endogenous, exogenous, and metamorphic.

Mineral deposits can been classified into two broad categories:

Metallic mineral resources

Metallic minerals are minerals containing one or more metallic elements. Substances that have a metallic luster are opaque and electrically conductive. There are 2 subgroups of metallic minerals: ferrous and nonferrous (e.g., gold, silver, nickel, copper, lead, zinc, tin, etc.).

Metals occur in all kinds of rocks and usually in concentrations that are too low to be mined. Metallic ore deposits, however, are relatively rare concentrations of metal bearing minerals that contain enough metal to be profitably mined (and the profit is dependent on a number of economic factors).

Ferrous metals. Ferrous Metals mostly contain iron. Among them magmatic, carbonatite, skarn, metamorphosed volcanic hydrothermal, volcanic sedimentary, weathering crust and sedimentary types can be distinguished [4]. The main iron-bearing minerals of iron ores are hematite, magnetite, limonite, chamosite, thuringite and siderite. Iron ore deposits are referred to as industrial with iron reserves of several tens of millions of tons; while large iron deposits have hundreds of millions of tons. The total world raw ore metal reserves exceed 1,400 billion tons, among them industrial are more than 360 billion tons. The largest reserves are in Russia, Australia, China, Brazil, Ukraine and the USA (Table 4).

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Table 4

The world’s top 10 countries with the most iron ore reserves

Most of iron ore (mln. tons) is mined in China - 250, Brazil - 185, Australia more than 140, Russia -78, USA and India - 60, in Ukraine - 45, and also in Canada, South Africa, Sweden, Venezuela, Liberia And France.

The total iron ore reserves in Russia constitute approximately 100 billion tons, 59% of reserves are concentrated in the European part, and 41% - eastwards from the Urals.

Australia is the first in the world (143 million tons) in the volume of commercial iron ore exports. The extraction (90%) is conducted mainly in the Hammersley region (Pilbara district, Western Australia). Brazil is in the second place (131 million tons).

Non-ferrous metals. Non-ferrous metals are those which do not contain significant quantity of iron or iron as base metal. These metals possess low strength at high temperatures, generally suffer from hot shortness and have more shrinkage than ferrous metals. They are utilized in industry due to following advantages: 1. High corrosion resistance 2. Easy to fabricate, i.e., machining, casting, welding, forging and rolling 3. Possess very good thermal and electrical conductivity 4. Attractive colour and low density. The various non-metals used in industry are: copper, aluminium, tin, lead, zinc, and nickel, etc., and their alloys. [14] Precious metals. Precious metals refer to the metals that are considered to be rare and have a high economic value (Gold, silver, platinum).

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Precious metals used in industrial processes include iridium, palladium, which is used in electronics and chemical applications.

Non-metallic mineral resources

Non-metallic mineral resources: not mined to extract a metal or an energy source. The variety of the composition and properties of minerals determines the complex nature of their use. Nonmetallic minerals are divided into four groups:

(1)Chemical raw materials (halite, sylvinite, apatite, nitrates, natural salt, etc.), most of which are used to produce mineral fertilizers;

(2)Metallurgical raw materials, including nonmetallic minerals, used to produce refractories (refractory clays, dolomite, magnesite, quartzite, etc.)

(3)Construction materials, including nonmetallic construction materials (granite, labradorite, limestone, dolomite, marble, etc.)

(4)Nonmetallic non-ore raw materials, represented by the industrial crystals (diamond, phlogopite, and agate) and precious and semiprecious stones (jewelry diamond, emerald, topaz, ruby, agate, malachite, turquoise, jasper, and amber).

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(Uranus. Thorium). The main minerals of uranium ores are the uranatennite (nasturan) and carnotite. The largest explored uranium reserves are in Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Brazil and Niger, South Africa. China, Germany and the Czech Republic also have a significant part of reserves. There are uranium deposits in the USA, Namibia, Ukraine, India. In Russia industrial uranium reserves are concentrated in the Eastern Transbaikal. A large uranium field was explored recently in Buryatia. The only source of thorium is yellow translucent monazite grains containing up to 10% of thorium and found in coastal marine and alluvial sediments. Placer deposits of monazite are found in Australia, India, and Malaysia.

Mineral resources of Russia

Russia has the world's largest mineral resource base. Rich mineral reserves of ferrous, non-ferrous and rare metals are represented by the following deposits:

•The world's largest iron-ore basins - the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly, Mountain Shoriya.

•Non-ferrous ores - the Norilsk and Kola Peninsula deposits - copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum.

•Gold-bearing provinces of Eastern Siberia and the Far East.

•Tin - deposits of Yakutia, Magadan Region, Khabarovsk and Primorsk Territories.

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•Tungsten - The North Caucasus,

•Molybdenum - Krasnoyarsk Territory, Buryatia

•Antimony - Yakutia

•Explored copper and lead-zinc deposits in Eastern Siberia, the Far East

Questions:

Explain what the definition mineral resource means.

List the criteria used in classifications of mineral resources

Characterize the types of natural resources (metallic, nonmetallic/ solid, gaseous, liquid, etc..)

Describe the concept and parameters of ore deposits.

Characterize genetic types of deposits.

What are the types of metallic/non-metallic minerals

Provide a genetic non-metallic classification of mineral deposits.

What are the world’s top 10 countries with the most iron ore reserves?

What are the advantages of the industrial use of non-ferrous metals?

What are the groups of nonmetallic minerals?

What are the main minerals of uranium ores?

Give the examples of reserves of ferrous, non-ferrous and rare metals in Russia.

Practical session

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