It is ironic and unfortunate that the study of ore deposits---the largest geochemical anomalies in the earth's crust---is in a tumultuous state at a time when our technological abilities to collect, manipulate, depict and analyze geologic data are accelerating rapidly. We have never been in a better technical position to understand the Earth's geologic processes and history. Tremendous advances are being made in the applications of ion- and laser-microprobes, supercomputers, and global satellite positioning systems.
The current interest in global climate change is stimulating a renewed interest in those mineral deposits whose occurrence may reflect past climatic and environmental changes. Also, we are increasingly seeking more efficient ways of extracting, consuming and recycling mineral resources, to minimize the impacts on our environment. Given these conditions, there should be growing research opportunities for geologists who have an understanding of mineral deposit genesis. Yet there is a clear downturn in current domestic opportunities for those researchers whose primary avocation is studying how and where mineral deposits form and applying that knowledge to finding new resources. This downturn has been prompted by the evolving and sometimes conflicting economic, political, environmental and legislative constraints on domestic mineral exploration and exploitation, in the context of an increasingly global economy.
To prosper as a nation we must continue to produce trained experts who understand how and where mineral deposits form, but this capability is threatened. The current declines in domestic mineral exploration and the consequent decreased domestic university enrollments in the discipline of economic geology will have several long-term effects on U. S. research on ore deposits. Already taking place is a rapid de-emphasis of pure economic geology research programs at many universities, companies and government agencies. Many retiring senior economic geologists are either not being replaced or are being replaced by geologists with different specialties (often some aspect of environmental geology). Many excellent recent Ph.D.s are surviving on a year-to-year basis in post-doctoral positions, instead of landing permanent faculty and research positions.
Some economic geology research programs and their graduates will survive by shifting their emphases to the environmental contamination and remediation aspects of mineral resource exploitation. Others may conduct some ore deposits research under the banner of paleoenvironmental research. In the near-term, many domestic graduates interested in mineral exploration may find better employment opportunities overseas; those seeking domestic careers will need to emphasize the environmental and legislative aspects of resource exploitation and clean-up. An increasing number of graduate students in economic geology will likely come from developing foreign countries, where the need for trained individuals is great. Graduate students in U. S. economic geology programs may be more likely to work on mineral deposits in foreign countries, because of more active exploration and better access to new deposits. Studies of domestic deposits can be hampered by lack of both access to deposits and industry logistical support, prompted in part by liability and fiscal considerations.
Although the current domestic situation regarding ore deposits research is not rosy, the long-term outlook is by no means bleak. Economic geologists must of necessity be familiar with almost all aspects of the earth sciences, as well as with basic economics and politics, and therein lies their credentials for making continued contributions to science and human prosperity. Because ore deposits are the ultimate examples of geochemical diferentiation and enrichment in the Earth's crust, they will always provide fertile research ground for those who must understand the geochemistry of the elements and petrogenesis. By studying ore deposits, we learn fundamental aspects of geochemistry and geology that can be applied broadly to problems beyond the origin and occurrence of mineral resources.
Acknowledgments. The author thanks the anonymous reviewers, as well as the editors, for making the final version of this paper much more readable.