• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.177-187
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• 2019

Several volcanic activities have continued in Mt. Baekdu since the Millennium eruption, and these phenomena have increased the need for volcanic activity surveillance. Various geophysical approaches are needed to obtain the depth and size of magma chamber that lie several kilometers below the surface. We examined the applicability of direct-current resistivity survey in this study. In order to explore the deep magma chamber of Mt. Baekdu, which has a spatial limitation due to the borderline, a large-scale survey with a length of tens of kilometers should be conducted. This type of survey requires a distributed measurement system and optimized exploration designs. Therefore, we propose survey designs taking advantage of our developed distributed acquisition system and analyze the applicability using numerical simulation. We confirmed that our designs that use single survey line with offline transmitting points show comparable results to the conventional 3D survey. It is expected that our research result can contribute to the deep geophysical exploration in Mt. Baekdu.

• Mineral and Industry
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.8-17
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• 2008

• Mineral and Industry
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• v.25
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• pp.63-73
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• 2012

• Spatial Information Research
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.19-28
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• 2011

Recently, the interests of marine mineral resources has been increasing from the depletion of land resources around the world and many countries are involving in marine exploration work. South Korea is also currently performing exploration work to estimate the marine mineral resources around the Korean Peninsula. However, massive amounts of marine exploration data accumulated from the long-term exploration work have not been systematically managed. The data have been managed by the file based system instead of commercial database. The aim of this study is to construct GIS-based Marine Mineral Resource Information System using a spatial database for the core sediments of the marine exploration data. For constructing such DB system, GIS-based data items were classified, and a database was designed using relational database model. The database was constructed using commercial DBMS(Database Management System), Oracle. Also, necessary functions of the system were defined for the effective use of database based on users' requirement analysis. The GIS-based Marine Mineral Resource Information System has enabled to support the systematic management of the marine exploration data. Furthermore, it is expected that this spatial database will be useful in estimating the reserves of the mineral resources and provide valuable information for economic evaluation. In the future, the application of advanced techniques of spatial analysis and 3-dimensional display function will be required.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.399-406
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• 2022

In line with the megatrend of 2050 carbon neutrality, the amount of critical minerals used in clean-energy technology is expected to increase fourfold and sixfold, respectively, according to the Paris Agreement-based scenario as well as the 2050 carbon-neutrality scenario. And, in the case of Korea, in terms of the battery supply chain used for secondary batteries, the midstream that manufactures battery materials and battery cell packs shows strength, but the upstream that provides and processes raw materials is experiencing difficulties. The Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources has established a strategy to secure lithium, nickel, and cobalt and is conducting surveys to respond to the upstream risk of these types of battery raw materials. In the case of lithium, exploration has been carried out in Uljin, Gyeongsangbuk-do since 2020, and by the end of 2021, the survey area was selected for precision exploration by synthesizing all exploration data and building a 3D model. Potential resources will be assessed in 2022. In the case of nickel, the prospective site will be selected by the end of 2022 through a preliminary survey targeting 10 nickel sulfide deposits that have been prospected in the past. In the case of cobalt, Boguk cobalt is known only in South Korea, but there is only a record that cobalt was produced as a minor constituent of hydrothermal deposit. According to the literature, a cobalt ore body was found in the contact area between serpentinite and granite, and a protocol for cobalt exploration in Korea will be established.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.38 no.9
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• pp.19-33
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• 2022

Planarity geotechnical exploration missions were actively performed during the 1970s and there was a period of decline from the 1 990s to the 2000s because of budget. However, exploring space resources is essential to prepare for the depletion of Earth's resources in the future and explore resources abundant in space but scarce on Earth, such as rare earth and helium-3. Additionally, the development of space technology has become the driving force of future industry development. The competition among developed countries for exoplanet exploration has recently accelerated for the exploration and utilization of space resources. For these missions and resource exploration/mining, geotechnical exploration is required. There have been several missions to explore exoplanet ground, including the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. There are Apollo, LUNA, and Chang'E missions for exploration of the Moon. The Mars missions included Viking, Spirit/Opportunity, Phoenix, and Perseverance missions, and the asteroid missions included the Hayabusa missions. In this study, space planetary mineral resource exploration technologies are explained, and the future technological tasks of Korea are described.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.202-208
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• 2021

Induced polarization (IP) was first published in a Korean academic journal in 1973, and it was soon applied to coal and metal ore exploration. Then, in universities and research institutes, IP modeling studies using the finite element approach and experimental studies on IP responses for artificial samples were conducted. In the mid-1980s, the spectral IP (SIP) measurement module was introduced to Korea, and physical scale modeling and inversion approaches were developed. Due to the decline of the mineral resource industry, this method was not actively applied. However, the SIP method was not applied In the 1990s, IP exploration was applied in the investigation of hydrothermal deposits of sulfide minerals and bentonite mineralization zones, as well as to areas where the groundwater was contaminated by intruding seawater. In the 2000s, three-dimensional inversion of the IP approach was developed, and high-precision geophysical exploration was required to secure domestic and overseas mineral resources, so SIP experiments on rock samples and approaches for field exploration were developed. The SIP approach was proven useful for the exploration of metal deposits containing sulfide minerals by applying it to explore the mineralization zone of gold-silver deposits in the Haenam region. The IP method is considered to be effective in exploring critical minerals (lithium, cobalt, and nickel) in high-tech industries. It also is expected to be useful for environmental and geotechnical investigations.

• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.417-422
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• 2009

국내에는 충주 어래산 광화대와 홍천 광화대에 대한 탐사 결과 약 4,600,000 톤의 자원량을 확보하였으나 시추량의 제한에 따른 자원량의 부족과 낮은 가격으로 인해 경제성이 없는 것으로 잠정적으로 판단된 바 있다. 그러나 최근 희토류 가격이 2000년대 초에 비해 2~3배까지 상승하였으며 최저개발 품위가 REO 2%대로 낮아짐으로써 두 광화대에 대한 체계적인 정밀탐사를 통하여 보다 정확한 자원평가가 요구된다. 이 두 지역은 REE 뿐만 아니라 Fe, Sr 등이 수반됨으로써 그 잠재적인 가치를 높일 수 있을 것으로 판단된다. 하동 광화대는 Ti외 REE와 Li의 추출이 가능하여 경제성을 상승시킬 수 있을 것으로 판단된다. 양양 광화대는 Zr-Nb-REE 광화대로 알려져 있으나 체계적 탐사가 수행되지 않아 자원량의 산정은 수행되지 않았으나 REE 외 희유금속인 Nb을 수반하여 그 잠재적인 가치가 높다고 판단된다. 국내 REE 자원탐사는 체계적이고 계획적인 탐사가 진행 된 적이 없어 단일 광상에 대해 정확한 매장량 산정이나 경제성 분석 등이 이루어지지 않아 그 가치 판단이 모호함으로써 개발에 제한을 가지고 있다. 세계적인 수요량이 현재 REO 100,000톤에서 2013년에는 거의 200,000톤으로의 증가가 전망되고, Eu의 가격은 2000년 중반에 비해 최근 2배 상승하였으며, Dy의 가격은 3배 이상 급상승 추세에 있어 대부분 희토류 산화물 가격은 점차 증가될 것으로 전망한다. 전 세계 희토류 생산의 95%를 중국이 독점하고 있어 자원이 1개국에 편재된 극히 좋지 않은 자원환경으로 세계 각국에서 희토류 탐사에 전념하고 있는 실정이다. 아울러 하이브리드 카 생산이 증대되면 중국만이 생산하는 중희토류의 수요가 급증하여 가격 상승과 함께 수급에 차질이 있을 것으로 추측된다. 따라서 국내 희토류 자원에 대한 체계적이고 단계적인 중장기적 탐사를 통하여 REE 자원을 확보하여 개발한다면 국내 REE 자원의 수급을 원활히 할 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2019

Regional airborne magnetic survey is very cost-effective mapping tool. Magnetic anomaly maps have abundant information, which are an important tool for understanding the geological evolution and mineral exploration. For this reason, the governments of many countries have made significant investment in the acquisition of airborne geophysical data over many decades. KIGAM (Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources) began nationwide airborne magnetic mapping programme in 1982, and completed in 2017. The obtained magnetic data was reprocessed and magnetic database was built in 2018. In addition, the magnetic anomaly map of Korea with a scale of 1:1,000,000 was published. In this paper, we introduced a new magnetic anomaly map of Korea through describing the changing survey parameters during data acquisitions and history of data processing.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.72-79
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• 2019

Underwater object detection method adopting electrical resistivity technique was proposed recently, and the need of advanced data processing algorithm development counteracting various marine environmental conditions was required. In this paper, we present an improved water tank experiment system and its operation results, which can provide efficient test and verification. The main features of the system are as follows: 1) All the processes enabling real time process for not only simultaneous gathering of object images but also the electrical field measurement and visualization are carried out at 5 Hz refresh rates. 2) Data acquisition and processing for two detection lines are performed in real time to distinguish the moving direction of a target object. 3) Playback and retest functions for the saved data are equipped. 4) Through the monitoring screen, the movement of the target object and the measurement status of two detection lines can be intuitively identified. We confirmed that the enhanced physical modeling system works properly and facilitates efficient experiments.