• Introduction
• Objectives
• Readings & Articles
• Lecture
• Global View
• Assessment

Introduction

Coal miners work in an underground Greene Valley Mine in Jasonville, Indiana (Greene County). Southwestern Indiana continues to support above and below ground coal mining. (Photo:  Indiana State Library.)

Do you like all that stuff you own?  Take a look around the room.  Take a look at the computer you are using to view this webpage.  Everything you see around you required the use of some mineral resource to be there for you.  Even that apple you ate for a snack required mineral resources: a truck likely drove it from the orchard to you and that truck was made out of some combination of metals which had to be mined from a mineral resource.

According to the Minerals Information Institute, if you’re an average American, you require some 48,000 pounds of minerals each year:

Your textbook does a great job of covering the geologic and biological process that creates mineral resources and covering the environmental impacts of mineral extraction and production.  In this module, we’ll cover the definition of a mineral resource (as opposed to a general natural resource), discuss how we determine if we’ll build a mine, summarize the environmental costs and introduce the topic of the human costs of mining, financial costs of mining history, and finally, we’ll cover the mineral resources unique to Indiana.

As you think about the textbook readings and the ideas covered here, think about the concept of sustainability.  Are current levels of mineral use sustainable?  How does recycling fit in to your understanding?  Also think about sustainability of our land and water resources.  Because Earth is a system of interconnected parts, the extraction of minerals can have wide reaching negative effects on other Earth systems.  How do these effects affect the sustainability of clean air, water, and land resources for future generations?