environment · manufacturing · energy · family: the answer is in a field you’ve never heard of
prospectingbyluckinthecleanenergyage
Geological understanding of critical mineral concentration is too primitive for targeted exploration
Problem statement
In 2024 the U.S. imported 80% of the rare earth elements it used, and the federal 2025 List of Critical Minerals names 60 minerals (lithium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, and the rare earths among them) that face potential risks from disrupted supply chains. NSF's Directorate for Geosciences describes fundamental research on critical minerals as a key component in ensuring the metals and rare earth elements required for a clean-energy future, and it asks for work on basic questions: how geologic and geochemical processes form critical minerals and concentrate them into economically viable deposits, what controls the leaching and concentration of critical minerals from mine tailings and other anthropogenically transformed geologic environments, and how to identify and characterize critical mineral resources in Earth's crust and on the ocean floor. The letter requires proposals to fall within the scope of NSF's geosciences programs; proposals with a primary focus on optimizing engineering solutions, it says, are not appropriate.
Why this matters
The USGS director, announcing the 2025 List, said that critical minerals underpin industries worth trillions of dollars and that import dependence puts key sectors at risk. The List singles out rare earth elements as the group whose supply disruption would impose the highest cost on the U.S. economy; they are essential to technologies like smartphones, hard drives, and advanced defense systems. NSF ties the same minerals to the clean-energy transition. The USGS says it is mapping new domestic deposits and advancing the science of how geology influences their quality, size, and viability for extraction.
What’s been tried and why it hasn’t worked
The sources for this write-up are two NSF funding calls and a federal list. They do not review past exploration methods or say why those methods fell short. What they show is where NSF sees open questions. The GEO-CM letter asks for innovative prospecting approaches and technologies to identify and characterize critical mineral resources in Earth's crust and on the ocean floor. It asks for research on how contaminants from critical mineral exploration and extraction affect atmospheric and water quality, including surface and groundwater systems, and on how subsurface stress and pore pressure redistribution may cause ground subsidence or induce seismicity. It encourages proposals that bring together academic researchers and experts from partner organizations, including industry, and it spreads the topic across programs in Earth sciences, ocean sciences, atmospheric and geospace sciences, and polar programs.
What would unlock progress
Experimental work on the chemical properties and thermodynamic stability of minerals and fluids at high pressures and temperatures, and thermodynamic modeling of mineral-forming processes, both of which fall within the CESEV program's scope. Innovative prospecting approaches and technologies to aid in identifying and characterizing critical mineral resources, which the GEO-CM letter asks for (NSF's separate CAIG program supports AI methods for geoscience research questions in general; neither its program page nor its solicitation mentions minerals or prospecting). Identification and characterization of critical mineral resources on the ocean floor. Research on how environmental contaminants from critical mineral exploration and extraction affect water quality, including surface and groundwater systems, another topic the GEO-CM letter lists.
Entry points for student teams
A student team could compile published thermodynamic data for a specific critical mineral (e.g., lithium or cobalt) across the pressure-temperature conditions relevant to hydrothermal ore formation, identify gaps in the experimental database, and use computational chemistry to predict missing values. Alternatively, a team could use publicly available geochemical survey data (USGS, state geological surveys) and machine learning to identify geochemical signatures predictive of undiscovered critical mineral deposits in a specific region. Relevant skills: geochemistry, thermodynamics, data science, machine learning, environmental science.
Genes
Structural cousins: stuck the same way, in other fields
Sources
"Novel Approaches to Critical Minerals Research in the Geosciences (GEO-CM)," NSF Dear Colleague Letter NSF 23-057; "Chemical Evolution of the Solid Earth and Volcanology (CESEV)," NSF 25-516; USGS 2025 Critical Minerals List. (accessed 2026-02-15). go to source ↗
Working notes
Notes made while writing and checking this brief, shown as written. They use working shorthand.
- Cross-domain connection: distinct from `critical-minerals-waste-extraction` (which addresses extraction from existing waste streams). This brief addresses the upstream geological knowledge needed to find new deposits. Together they represent the two ends of the critical minerals pipeline.
- The `constraint:supply-chain` tag applies because import dependence (80% of the rare earth elements the U.S. used in 2024) puts key sectors at risk.
- The EAR division's CESEV program (solicitation posted December 9, 2024, one of four programs created in the division's realignment) lists among its example research areas the thermodynamic stability of minerals, melts, fluids and gases at high pressures and/or temperatures, and the formation, distribution, and cycling of critical elements, minerals, materials, and/or ore deposits.
Reconciliation 2026-10-01: Fact repair after reading the whole write-up against every source it names. All were fetched on 2026-10-01 directly from nsf.gov and usgs.gov and read in full text: the GEO-CM Dear Colleague Letter, NSF 23-057 (the link on the Source line); the CESEV program page and the NSF 25-516 solicitation (https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/cesev-chemical-evolution-solid-earth-volcanology/506383/nsf25-516/solicitation); the USGS page on the 2025 List of Critical Minerals (https://www.usgs.gov/programs/mineral-resources-program/science/about-2025-list-critical-minerals) and the USGS release announcing the final List (https://www.usgs.gov/news/science-snippet/interior-department-releases-final-2025-list-critical-minerals, dated November 14, 2025); and the page for NSF's CAIG program, which the text names (https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/caig-collaborations-artificial-intelligence-geosciences). The two NSF documents are short funding calls and the USGS pages describe a list, so they carry much less than the write-up said. (1) Removed because no source contains them: the International Energy Agency projection of a 4–6x increase in critical mineral supply by 2040; declining exploration success rates; China's shares of lithium processing (~60%), cobalt refining (~70%) and rare earth processing (~90%); and the sentence that every EV battery, wind turbine and semiconductor depends on minerals "whose supply cannot be rapidly expanded because we do not know where to look." The section now gives what the USGS release says about why the List matters. (2) The Problem Statement said the geology of these minerals "is poorly understood at a fundamental level," that "we lack basic knowledge," and that exploration "remains empirical rather than predictive." The NSF letter does not say this; it invites fundamental research on a list of topics. The paragraph now reports those topics as what NSF asks for, and adds from the USGS release that the 2025 List names 60 minerals. "Hydrothermal and magmatic processes" became the letter's "geologic and geochemical processes," and "this is not a mining engineering problem" became the letter's statement that proposals must fall within the scope of NSF's geosciences programs and that proposals with a primary focus on optimizing engineering solutions are not appropriate. (3) The whole "What's Been Tried" paragraph was not in any source: that traditional prospecting misses deposits at depth, that thermodynamic data for rare earth fluids are "sparse and contradictory," that ocean floor deposits are mapped at coarse resolution, that poorly modeled environmental impacts deter investment, and that research has been fragmented across communities. The section now says plainly that the sources do not review past methods, and reports the open questions the letter lists. (4) The sentence about a 2024 Hydrothermal Geochemistry and Critical Minerals Meeting was removed; no source mentions it. (5) The sentence "Integration of AI/ML with geochemical datasets for predictive prospecting (supported by NSF's CAIG program)" is not in any source: the CAIG program page and its solicitation (NSF 25-530) describe support for AI methods on geoscience research questions in general and do not mention minerals or prospecting. The sentence now gives the letter's topic of innovative prospecting approaches and technologies, with the CAIG program's general scope noted in parentheses. (6) "Mineral stability and solubility at conditions relevant to ore-forming systems" became the solicitation's wording (thermodynamic stability of minerals and fluids at high pressures and temperatures; thermodynamic modeling of mineral-forming processes); the word solubility is not in the solicitation. The CESEV bullet above was reworded the same way. "Coupled models of ore formation, groundwater interaction, and environmental impact" became the letter's topic on how contaminants from exploration and extraction affect water quality, including surface and groundwater systems; the letter lists that topic but does not call for coupled models. (7) Two bullets were removed from these notes because no source contains them: "8 proposals totaling $2.64M" funded in a first GEO-CM round, and a Growing Convergence Research grant to Colorado School of Mines. (8) The supply-chain bullet's reason, "geopolitical concentration of both raw materials and processing capacity," is not in the sources and now gives the import-dependence statement from the USGS release. (9) On the Source line, the two NSF titles were corrected to the titles on the NSF pages (the program abbreviation follows the title, and the letter's number is NSF 23-057). Confirmed in the sources and left as written: the U.S. imported 80% of the rare earth elements it used in 2024 (USGS release); lithium, cobalt, gallium, germanium and rare earths are on the 2025 List; leaching from mine tailings, resources in the crust and on the ocean floor, groundwater effects and induced seismicity are topics in the letter; engineering-focused proposals are out of scope for the letter. Could not be checked: the entry point's "publicly available geochemical survey data (USGS, state geological surveys)" names no specific dataset, so there was nothing to open; it is left as written. As of 2026-10-01 the NSF page lists the CESEV program (25-516) as archived. No title changed. Genome tags untouched. A second reader went over these repairs on the same day, opened every source again, and also read the CAIG solicitation (NSF 25-530) and the Federal Register notice of the final 2025 List (document 2025-19813, November 7, 2025, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/11/07/2025-19813/final-2025-list-of-critical-minerals), which confirm the 60-mineral count and contain none of the removed figures; all nine repairs were kept, and three sentences (two in What Would Unlock Progress, one in the Problem Statement) were reworded to stay within the letter's wording.