Geology and Nonrenewable Minerals

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Geology and Nonrenewable Minerals
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Geology

• Geology science devoted to study of dynamic
  processes occurring on earth's surface and
  interior
• Three major concentric zones

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Earth's Dynamics

• Core earth's inner most zone
• Mantle surrounds the core, thick zone of solid
  rock
• Asthenosphere located right above mantle,
  partly melted rock
• Crust continental / oceanic crust, thinnest
  zone of earth
• Lithosphere outermost part of mantle

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Earth's Movement

• Convection cells move large volumes of rock and
  heat in loops within the mantle
• Continent formation
• Tectonic Plates move extremely slowly atop the
  asthenosphere

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Plate Boundaries
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Plate Movement

• Speed of plates rate at which fingernails grow
• Seperate Collide Slide Past
• Mountain formation, earthquakes, volcanoes

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Seperation

• Magma (molten rock) flows up through resulting
  cracks
• Creates Ocean Ridges, high peeks and deep canyons

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Collision

• Continental plate rides up over the denser
  oceanic plate
• Subduction the denser plate gets pushed down
  into the mantle
• Subduction Zone
• Continental plate collision causes mountain
  ranges to be created

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Slide and Grind

• Plates can also grind past one another
• Usually occurs at transform faults
• Most of these are located on ocean floor, but few
  are found on land
• i.e. North American Plate and Pacific Plate slide
  past each other near the San Andreas Fault

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Volcanos

• Volcano occurs where magma reaches the earth's
  surface through a central vent / long crack
• Fissure
• Occurs near tectonic plate movement
• Lava magma which reaches the earth's surface
• Volcanic activity can release lava rock, hot
  ash, liquid lava and gases
• Provide some benefits formation of mountains,
  soil fertilization

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Earthquakes

• Transform fault fracture in earth's crust
• Seismic Waves energy accumulate is released in
  form of vibrations
• Most earthquakes occur at boundaries of tectonic
  plates
• Scientists measure the the magnitude of seismic
  waves
• Magnitude measure of ground motion caused by
  earthquake as indicated by the amplitude

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Measuring Earthquakes

• Seismograph measures the amplitude of an
  earthquake
• Richter Scale each unit has an amplitude of 10
  times greater than the next smaller unit
• i.e. 5.0 is 10 times more ground shaking than 4.0
• Largest earthquake Chile, May 22, 1960 measured
  9.5 on Richter Scale

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Tsunami

• Tsunami a series of large waves generated when
  part of the ocean floor suddenly rises or drops
• Usually result of an underwater earthquake or
  volcanic eruption
• Travel across the ocean at the speed of a jet
  plane
• Waves are far apart, crests not very high at
  first, yet when approaching coast it slows and
  waves squeeze together

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Tsunami Detection

• Can be detected through network or ocean buoys or
  pressure recorders located on ocean floor
• Between 1900 and 2008, tsunamis killed an
  estimated 278,000 people in regions of Pacific
  Ocean

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Earth's Crust

• Minerals an solid element that has a regular
  internal crystalline structure.
• Rocks solid combinations of minerals.

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Rock Types

• Sedimentary Dead plant and animal remains
• Igneous Cooled and pressurized magma
• Metamorphic Rocks that are subject to high
  temperature and pressures

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Rock Recycling

• Changes rocks from one type to another
• Concentrates the planet's non renewable recousrces

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Mineral Resources

• Fossil Fuels
• Metallic Minerals
• Known collectively as "non-renewable resources"

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Ore

• Low-grade Small Concentration
• High-grade High Concentration

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Mining Types

• Surface Mining
• Open Pit Mining
• Strip Mining
• Mountaintop Removal Mining
• Subsurface Mining

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Harmful Affects of Mining

• Scarring and Disruption to Surface
• Chemical Spillage
• Prohibits Vegetation
• Subsidence (collapse of land)

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Removing Metals from Ore

• SmeltingHeating Ore to extract desired metals
• Pollution
• Ore Mineral
• "Gangue"

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12-4 Nonrenewable Resources

• The earths crusts contains many important
  resources that cannot be replenished
• Some of these resources are very common like iron
  while others like platinum are very scarce
• Five countries, the United States, Russia,
  Canada, South Africa, and Australia supply most
  of the earths nonrenewable resources

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United States Nonrenewable Resource Use

• Between the years of 1900 and 1950 the United
  States greatly increased its resource use.
• This lead to the depletion of its large supplies
  of resources like lead, iron, and aluminum
• Due to the shortage of resources, the United
  States import over 50 of its nonrenewable
  resources

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Important Resources

• Minerals are very important to a countries
  economic status, for instance South Africa bases
  its economy off the mining of Gold, Chromium, and
  Platinum
• Experts believe that four metal resources are
  very important to a countries economic and
  military strength Manganese, Cobalt, Chromium,
  and Platinum

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Overuse of Nonrenewable Resources

• Thomas Graedel at Yale University did a study
  that stated that if every country in the world
  used nonrenewable resources like developed
  countries, than there would not be enough metal
  resources meet the demand of the people.

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Economic Depletion of Resources

• If we use a resource so much, until the point
  that its price drops lower than the cost of
  actually extracting and transporting the
  resource, than the resource will be economically
  depleted.

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Dealing With Economic Depletion

• When a resource becomes economically depleted
  than there are five ways to increase the price of
  the product
• Recycle or reuse existing supplies
• Waste less
• Use less
• Find a substitute
• Or do without the resource

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The Cost of A Resource

• The cost of a resource is based off of the supply
  and demand of the product.
• In general, in a competitive market, if the
  supply is greater than the demand, than the
  market will be considered cheap
• On the other hand if the supply is less than the
  demand than the good will be considered scarce
  and thus will be more expensive
• Most mineral prices are kept artificially low to
  help promote economic growth

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Lower Grade Mining

• One of the ways to limit the loss of nonrenewable
  metals is to have lower grade mining ores, which
  are ores that produce less in order to increase
  the cost of the metal
• There are limiting factors however like water
  shortages, increased cost, and increased
  environmental disruption

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Ocean Minerals

• Most minerals in the ocean are not concentrated
  enough to be industrialized.
• Only Bromine, Magnesium, and Sodium Chloride are
  found in high enough concentrations
• Hydrothermal deposits may in the future become a
  good source of minerals from the ocean but it is
  currently to expensive

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Case Study- The U.S. General Mining Law of 1872

• The law stated that a person or corporation that
  claims that a piece of land contains valuable
  minerals can assume legal ownership of the land.
  You must spend 500 on improvements and 120 a
  year for every 20 acres
• This applied for all lands that were not National
  Parks or Wilderness Areas

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Case Study- Cont.

• The impacts of this law was that people abused
  the law and began to build essentially whatever
  they wanted on the land.
• Also because of this law, mining companies have
  to pay very small taxes, around2.3 of their
  royalties
• The law has been tightened up over the last
  couple of decades

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12-5 How Can we Use Mineral Resource More
Sustainably

• Many scientists believe that in the future many
  key minerals will be able to be replaced by
  technology in the future
• Still some minerals like Platinum will probably
  never be replaced.
• Because of this we need to limit the overuse of
  scarce resources

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Recycling and Reusing

• The easiest way to not lose scarce resources is
  to recycle and reuse
• Recycling has a much lower environmental cost
  than mining. For example recycling cans and scrap
  aluminum has 95 less air pollution, 97 less
  water pollution, and uses 95 less energy

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Case Study-Copying Ecosystems

• One way to increase sustainability is to recycle
  and reuse minerals and chemicals similar to what
  is found in nature. In nature the outputs of one
  organism become the inputs of another
• This biomimicry is being tried in Kalundborg,
  Denmark.