Environment, Minerals and Infrastructure is an interdisciplinary panel that has been launched by the EAGE to address global resource, construction and ecological challenges. It focuses on the sustainable management of raw materials, environmental protection and critical subsurface engineering.
The Environment segment focuses on monitoring near-surface changes, reducing pollution and managing ecological impacts from industrial transitions. The Minerals segment focuses on sourcing and recycling critical raw materials like lithium, cobalt and copper needed for green technologies. The infrastructure segment focuses on developing robust foundations, transport routes and energy grids that withstand shifting climate and industrial demands.
This month we present a range of papers that address some of these challenges with innovative and state of the art solutions that showcase the best of geoscience.
Rodney Garrard examines how geoscientists roles must now extend beyond site characterisation into uncertainty governance and institutional realism, and whether alternative concepts such as deep borehole disposal may offer proportionate options alongside large, mined repositories.
Kay Koster et al. discuss an approach for long-term monitoring timeseries, crucial to understand building responses to soil deformation, are at the moment lacking in the Netherlands.
Gwenola Michaud et al. demonstrate both the potential and limitations of DAS cross-well traveltime inversion in near-surface settings and provide guidance for interpreting velocity estimates under such conditions.
Alireza Malehmir et al. discuss how integrated geophysics can effectively de-risk mineral exploration and improve confidence in deep targeting.
Mengli Zhang et al. discuss information-efficient acquisition approaches, such as ergodic sampling, and the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in integrating diverse geoscientific datasets to support more informed decisions that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of mineral exploration.
Tom Davis et al. demonstrate how reservoir characterisation techniques have helped to revitalise an oil field in Colorado.
