Exploration for Critical Minerals Resources in the Zuni Mountains, NM

Exploration geochemistry is important for locating critical minerals resources that are crucial to meeting the demand placed by a variety of industries, and stream sediment sampling is often the first step towards achieving this goal.This exploration technique has been shown to be a reliable way of locating deposits in the early stages of exploration over large areas.In the past, the Zuni Mountains have been mined for their deposits of copper, fluorite, and barite, although obsidian, turquoise, azurite, malachite, and copper have been (and continue to be) mined by the Zuni people and later prospectors.The Zuni Mountains are a small mountain range located in northwest New Mexico, near Grants.These mountains were formed during the Laramide orogeny and lie along the Jemez Lineament.While much of the lithology of the Zuni Mountains is sedimentary, there are units of Precambrian basement rock, some of which have been metamorphosed.With the demand for critical minerals increasing, the NMBGMR has been contracted by the USGS to evaluate the critical minerals potential of the Zuni Mountains through stream sediment sampling and chip sampling.From the data that were received from USGS (all stream sediment and chip sample data from the August 2023 field trips), there are some key differences between the initial NURE (National Uranium Resource Evaluation) data and the Zuni Mountains project data.