China's Shale Gas Geological Investigation and Prospecting Have Made Significant Progress

Since 2015, the China Geological Survey has implemented a major program of ＂Geology Survey of Land Energy Mineral Resources＂. Till now, a total of billions of RMB have been invested and seven engineering projects have been established, all of which has greatly enhanced the geological survey and exploration of China＇s continental shale gas in an attempt to overcome the oil and gas shortage.

Chinese Geological Prospecting Gets Good Harvest, and Mineral Resources and Reserves Increase Gratifying in 2012

On March 27, 2013, the Ministry of Land and Resources held a news conference to announce a significant achievement in Chinese geological prospecting work in 2012. According to government/industry statistics, proved reserves of oil and natural gas have increase substantially in 2012. Newly proven national petroleum geological reserves are 15.2 million tons, a year-on-year growth of 13%, which is the tenth time of more than 1 billion tons since the founding of People＇s Republic of China; newly proven technically recoverable reserves are 270 million tons, a year-on-year growth of 7%. The 2012 national newly proved reserves from natural gas exploration are 961.22 billion cubic meters, a year-on-year growth of 33%, which is the highest level in our history; the new proven technically recoverable reserves are 500.8 billion cubic meters, a year-on-year growth of 36%. National natural gas production was 106.76 billion cubic meters, a year-on-year growth of 5.4%. The Ordos, Tarim and Sichuan basins are still the main producing areas of natural gas in China. In 2012, national oil production was 205 million tons, a year-on-year growth of 1%, which made a steady increase. The national coal-bed methane production was 2.57 billion cubic meters, a year-on-year growth of 24%.

China's Manganese Geological Research and Prospecting have Achieved Great Breakthrough

Data announced by the Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources in 2015 suggest that China has discovered more than 480 manganese ore-producing areas, with manganese ore resource reserves up to 1.22 billion tons, including 0.303 billion tons of basic reserves and 0.915 billion tons amount of resource. Among these reserves, manganese carbonate ores account for 56%, manganese oxide ores （including spongy manganese ores） accounts for 25%, and other types of manganese ore occupy 19%. Rich ores with 〉30% manganese content only account for 5% of the total resource amount, and the remaining 95% are poor manganese ores. Since 1983 when China first began to import, the imported manganese ores have increased annually by 25%. In 2001, the annual imported manganese ores reached 1.71 million tons. From 2010, the annual imported manganese ores increased by greater than 45%, reaching up to 12 million tons in 2015. Thus it seemed that the shortage of manganese ore resources will be a longterm phenomenon for China＇s economic development.

Geological Prospecting and Mining in Tibet

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2015–2020 Geological Survey Program of China Geological Survey Bureau

On 1–5 September 2014,the China Geological Survey Bureau held a 2015–2020 Geology and Mineral Resources Investigation and Assessment Special Planning and Deployment Meeting to plan the next six years in order to invest nearly ten billion US dollars to implement 9 programs and 50 projects with the aim of developing geological survey work,and to play a leading role in ensuring sustained and stable development.

Nonferrous Geological Prospecting Institutions Discover Important Mineral and Rare Metal Reserves

The quadrennial Secretary General’s meeting of the Geological and Mineral Resources Branch of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association(CNMIA)took place on April 9.It’s learned from the meeting that nonferrous geological prospecting institutions across the country completed 3,901 geological

Explainable artificial intelligence models for mineral prospectivity mapping

Mineral prospectivity mapping(MPM)is designed to reduce the exploration search space by combining and analyzing geological prospecting big data.Such geological big data are too large and complex for humans to effectively handle and interpret.Artificial intelligence(AI)algorithms,which are powerful tools for mining nonlinear mineralization patterns in big data obtained from mineral exploration,have demonstrated excellent performance in MPM.However,AI-driven MPM faces several challenges,including difficult interpretability,poor generalizability,and physical inconsistencies.In this study,based on previous studies,we devised a novel workflow that aims to constructing more transparent and explainable artificial intelligence(XAI)models for MPM by embedding domain knowledge throughout the AI-driven MPM,from input data to model design and model output.This newly proposed approach provides strong geological and conceptual leads that guide the entire AI-driven MPM model training process,thereby improving model interpretability and performance.Overall,the development of XAI models for MPM is capable of embedding prior and expert knowledge throughout the modeling process,presenting a valuable and promising area for future research designed to improve MPM.