Mineral resources are the totality of all minerals found in the bowels of the planet, available and suitable for industrial use. This category includes not only mineral land, but also those found at the bottom of the oceans.
Mineral resources are an extensive concept that has several aspects. From the point of view of geology, this is a set of deposits in which the chemical elements and the minerals consisting of them are concentrated in sharply increased doses compared to their average (clarke) content in the earth's crust, which ensures the feasibility of their industrial development. If we consider the economic aspect, mineral resources are a raw material base for the development of industry (fuel and energy complex, construction, metallurgy, chemical industry), as well as a possible object of international cooperation.
Scientists have developed a classification of mineral resources by area of use. From this point of view, the following groups are distinguished:
1. Fuel and energy resources. First of all, it is oil and natural gas, as well as coal, oil shale. Uranium ores became industrial minerals only at the end of the 20th century. Now they also belong to this category. Historically, peat also belongs to this group, although at present it does not have industrial significance. The listed minerals are of sedimentary origin. As a rule, they are confined to the covers of ancient platforms, their marginal and internal deflections.
2. Ores:
- ferrous metals. First of all, it is iron, as well as vanadium, manganese and chromium;
- non-ferrous and alloying metals. This is aluminum ore (bauxite, alunite, nepheline apatite, etc.), copper ore, nickel, lead-zinc, tungsten, molybdenum, etc .;
- noble metals (gold, silver, platinum).
Ores either accompany foundations and shields of ancient platforms, or are confined to folded zones, where they often form metallogenic belts, which owe their origin to deep tectonic faults.
3. Precious and semiprecious minerals (diamond, corundum and its varieties, spinel, emerald, jasper, varieties of quartz and many others).
4. Mining and chemical mineral resources. This group includes rock, potassium and magnesia salts, phosphorites and apatites, sulfur and its compounds, barite, fluorite, boron ores and other minerals that are raw materials for the chemical industry.
5. Industrial raw materials of non-metallic origin (quartz, graphite, asbestos, mica, talc, etc.).
6. Building materials (marble, clay, slate slates, granite, gabbro-diabase, limestone, glass and cement raw materials, etc.).
7. Hydromineral resources (groundwater, both fresh and mineralized, including thermal and used in balneology).
Non-metallic mineral deposits are found both on platforms and in folded zones.
This classification is very arbitrary, since often different industries can use the same raw materials. For example, apatite or limestone can be used both in metallurgy and in the chemical industry, and limestone can also be used in construction.
Mineral resources began to be used by man at the dawn of civilization, which was reflected in the name of some eras (for example, the Stone or Bronze Age). At present, as Academician A.E. Fersman put it, at the feet of mankind the entire Mendeleev system. In modern industry, more than 200 types of minerals are involved. Almost all of them belong to the non-renewable category, therefore, one of the most important areas of modern ecology is the development of a set of measures to prevent the resource crisis.