PRESERVING CRITICAL MINERAL DATA IN ARKANSAS

Arkansas is rich in mineral resources. Many of those resources have been identified as critical minerals by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). In 2019, the Office of the State Geologist (OSG) received a grant through the USGS National Geological Data Preservation Program (NGDPP) to begin identifying the critical minerals in Arkansas and scanning reports associated with them. For the past 5 years, OSG has expanded work on critical mineral preservation through NGDPP grants to include the preservation of valuable core and cuttings through re-boxing, the scanning of original, highly detailed, or handwritten borehole descriptions, and the creation of a database of those boreholes. OSG has also submitted samples for geochemical analysis from core and cuttings from deep boreholes in areas of known mineralization to expand our knowledge and understanding of the critical minerals available in Arkansas.