Tue
12 Nov 2019Metal Earth Annual Report 2018-2019
Metal Earth: A Global Initiative - Year 3
Annual Report 2018-2019
This annual report represents the work completed in Year 3 of Metal Earth (May 2018 to April 2019), a seven-year, $104 million applied R&D program. This global initiative began in 2016 as a strategic consortium of 25 Canadian and international (United States, Australia, and Germany) researchers from academia, government and industry, and led by the Mineral Exploration Research Centre (MERC), part of the Harquail School of Earth Sciences (HSES) at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.
The Metal Earth program was made possible with $49.2 million in funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF), the largest geoscience grant in Canadian history, $5 million in funding from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. (NOHFC), a $1 million donation from the (David) Harquail family’s Midas Touch Foundation, and cash and inkind contributions from 22 private sector and government survey partners.
More than 60 projects and subprojects were conducted this year by Metal Earth researchers and collaborators. Research activities included 5 of the 6 thematic research projects that were approved in Year 2 and began in Year 3. In addition to publishing 24 government survey reports and maps, progress and related findings have been shared through 157 workshop and conference presentations, journal articles, theses, and summary of fieldwork reports.
A total of 8 Metal Earth projects were successfully concluded. Their results, along with the results of ongoing projects, can be found in the Downloadable Reports and Papers section of Appendix E in the Annual Report. Findings along all transects and through data compilation have also been shared in numerous publications listed in Appendix D. Another 7+ projects in 5 transects are slated to begin in Year 4 and are briefly described in the Future Work section. All other projects and subprojects profiled in this annual report will be completed between Years 4 - 7.
Projects undertaken from May 2018 - April 2019 were led by Canadian and international research associates, postdoctoral fellows, and Ph.D. and M.Sc. students supervised by Metal Earth faculty and science leaders for a total of 41 person years of training and mentorship in Year 3 alone.
