The U.S. Geological Survey says it has $250,000 available for mineral resource research in 2010.
The agency says it is looking to fund projects in four categories:
- Methods to improve the assessment of concealed mineral resource,
- Methods to define limits of layered and sediment-hosted stratiform deposits for the purpose of constructing global grade and tonnage models for these types of deposits,
- Development of advanced models and methods to reduce uncertainties and risks in probabilistic resource assessments, and
- New approaches to reach accurate and comprehensive mineral deposit or mineral environmental models for deposit types of iron, lithium, manganese, phosphate, platinum-group metals, potash, rare earths, titanium and TiO2, or uranium.
The grants are being administered through the USGS’s Mineral Resources External Research Program.
Applications will be accepted from Aug. 17 – Sept. 29, 2009. Applications can be submitted via the government’s special grants portal using program announcement No. 1-HQPA0005.
“This grants research program will help support the USGS’s ongoing effort to prepare for a new national mineral resource assessment of the United States, scheduled to begin in 2012,” said Jeff Doebrich, USGS Mineral Resources Program Associate coordinator. “This is an opportunity for collaboration between USGS scientists and the greater scientific community to reduce the uncertainty in mineral resource and mineral environmental assessments.”
To get a sense of what type of projects have been getting USGS support, check out the MRERP website.