A Few Questions (and some Answers)

What do you do when hard rock geologists are hard to come by (as was the case when geological hiring was making a comeback in the early 2000s after the gold crash of 1997-98?

Normally, a lack of geologists with a required experience level or orientation toward mining, exploration, mineralogy, etc. has resulted in an across-the-board increase in pay for geologists in the industry.

Related Thought: Experienced hard rock geologists aren't necessarily hard to come by at the moment, but everyone I know is pretty busy.

One thing that can be done when geologists are hard to find is to increase recruiting efforts at schools that support mineralogy, petrology, geochemistry, and field camp. If you teach at such a school, you should make sure the industry knows that your school falls into that category. Some companies currently recruit, at least in part, outside the U.S.

Companies can advertise jobs where they will be seen: at schools supporting required classes and at geological societies geared towards mining and exploration such as the Geological Society of Nevada (GSN). Many companies routinely do the latter, and I get emails with the resulting job postings.

An Aside: More basic training is probably offered by some companies now than at any time in the recent past, although documentation of this supposition of mine is sparse. Training geologists to recognize common minerals and rock types should not be necessary. Training geologists to recognize uncommon minerals associated with common ore deposit types has, perhaps, beome more common through the years; many of these types of minerals used to be learned in ore petrography, in economic geology and mineral exploration classes, and in grad school. With the industry booming, many young geologists are bypassing grad school for jobs available now (a practise which is being recommended and supported by many companies). In my early days, it was fairly routine to be sent out to your first drill rig without any, or much of any, introduction to drilling, sampling on rigs, contamination problems, what to think if the driller says X, what to do if the driller says Y, when or how to tell them to shut it down (for a variety of reasons, such as poor sampling, drinking on the job, not showing up at the rig...), and many other things that I mostly just picked up on my own.

What do you do if your contacts in the hard rock world happen to be minimal or out of date (as mine were in the late 1990s and early 2000s)?

You go to places where hard rockers hang out, such as meetings of the GSN or AGS (Arizona Geological Society) or other state geological societies, field trips run by the GSN twice yearly, field trips run by the SEG (Society of Economic Geologists) every year at GSA, conventions offered every five years by the GSN and yearly by the NWMA (Northwest Mining Association), and you take short courses as necessary. In other words, you update or re-create your contact base. This may or may not take much effort, depending on a variety of variables.

What do you do if you happen to be unwilling to pay the going rate for experienced geologists or less experienced geologists with hard rock degrees (as happened to me in the late 1980s)?

A lot of times, you end up doing the work yourself or end up doing less work per time period—in other words, you suffer. If you hire less experienced people or those with an inadequate background (as I have had to do on occasion because of company hiring policies), you get less done, sometimes spending nearly the same amount as if you had paid a higher rate, depending on your overhead. And you kick yourself a couple times while complaining vehemently to your boss about the company pay rates. There is no real fix to this latter situation, except time and hopefully a management willing to buck the trend or status quo. (Your company may get bought or spun off, thus possibly fixing the management problem, as also happened in the late 1980s and probably also at other times.)

How long does it take to train inexperienced geologists to do the tasks at hand?

This really depends on what you need to have done. For a jasperoid-sampling program down ridgelines in Nevada, training time is minimal, perhaps a few days, at most a week if you also need to teach field location skills (GPS should make this considerably easier than in the past—though map-reading skills should still be required, in case the satellites go down or in case your batteries go dead or you drop your GPS in the water or over some cliff), maybe a day or two more to teach 4WD skills (use a helicopter instead!). If you want detailed rock descriptions or unusual mineralogical determinations (by geologists rather than by x-ray) in somewhat complicated alteration assemblages, for example in IOCG deposits and skarns (iron oxide-copper-gold) or in high and low sulfidation gold-copper systems you had better plan on two weeks minimum (often even with experienced geologists) depending on background and mineralogical aptitude—also, consider sending your geologists on an intensive mineralogy or alteration short course or an appropriate field trip. And, be sure to hire geologists with good observation skills! Always!!

As a just-out-of-school geologist, how should I go about getting a job in mineral exploration and mining?

Here, my ideas are possibly somewhat out of date, but see question number two about creating contacts, elicit help from your professors who are hopefully maintaining some contacts, and contact major and some minor exploration/mining companies.

Consider traveling to mining-oriented states like Nevada if you get some encouragement or just to knock on doors; this may not be done as often as it used to be, but I suspect it would still be considered a sign of initiative.

Sign up for the GSN so you'll get job announcements (not just for Nevada). Although many of these postings will be for people with at least some minimal years of experience, you may be able to apply for some of those jobs, and you will get names of people to contact. Also, jobs for entry-level geologists are advertised through these emails; I got one of these as recently as late May.

Other ideas that work are welcome.

How to Find Detachment: General Geology

I'll be at the Northwest Mining Association meeting in Reno for a few day (NWMA), which isn't to say I absolutely won't blog, but... in case I don't, I'm posting a few ways to find this blog. The category this time? General Geology. (And, yes, I'm the one defining the categories.)

Some searches leading to Looking for Detachment, in the general geology category:

• Caliente caldera
• columnar andesite
• Dixie Valley earthquake fault
• geological style
• geologists walking stick
• geosyncline
• geothermal gradient
• mauna kea types of rocks produced
• mt st helens shock wave photo
• photo detachment folds
• places to see before you die geology
• scales of maps
• survivor geologist

And some searching questions:

• Do you think that uniformitarianism is consistent with rare catastrophic events, like a great earthquake?
• How can you teach 4th graders about faults and folds with earthquakes
• How to become a geomorphologist
• Is broken top volcano close to a plate?
• What are some interesting things about Broken Top volcano
• What kind of a geologist should I be
• Who is responsible for outlining the principal now called uniformitarianism

If you want to see which posts these searches led to, I'll let you Google it yourself! (What a concept.)

P.S. I'm at a hotel that has outrageous wi-fi charges, so am connecting via Verizon. Comments will be published; my comment replies may be limited - unless I break down and buy some internet time!

Reader Questions

Occasionally I get questions from readers by email, although I haven't published or commented on these bloggishly, so far. Sometimes the questions are interesting: I suspected one, for example, of asking a particular question in order to try to flush out my home location - although I was not sure of that. Usually, I go ahead and answer questions - if possible, and if the questions aren't creepy in any way - and usually I receive nice thank-you emails back. Usually.

One thing that came up recently: a particular Googled question led a reader to this blog. My blog post that Google brought up didn't, however, answer the reader's question; as the particular post was more general than specific.

THE QUESTION: What element occurs in quartz, olivine, and calcite?

Now, really, this isn't a trick question at all, but quartz and olivine are silicates, and therefore have the element silicon in them (Si), but calcite is a carbonate, and has zero Si in it.

So, what do they have in common? Or, maybe they have nothing, elementally speaking, in common.

To figure this one out, all we have to do is write out the chemical formulas for each mineral: the mineral quartz, the mineral olivine, and the mineral calcite. I'll have to look one of them up, because it's been a while since I've practiced mineral formulas with homemade flash cards.

Quartz: SiO₂

Olivine: Mg₂SiO₄ to Fe₂SiO₄, with olivine actually being a series of minerals between (and including) the two end-member mineral species forsterite (the magnesium end-member) and fayalite (the iron end-member) - in other words, what is called a solid-solution series in chemistry and mineralogy. Because the olivine group minerals form a solid solution series between the Mg and Fe end members, the formula can also be written: (Mg,Fe)₂SiO₄.

Well, so far what do we have. We have the elements Si (silicon) and O (oxygen) in quartz, and we have the elements Mg (magnesium), Fe (iron), Si (silicon), and O (oxygen) in olivine. Of our three minerals in question, then, we potentially have two elements that they might have in common: silicon and oxygen. Now for our third mineral.

Calcite: CaCO₃

Ha! Calcite has the elements Ca (calcium), C (carbon), and O (oxygen).

That means the answer has to be - - - - - Oxygen! The only element present in all three minerals! Mystery solved.

For more information on minerals and many, many more pictures than the pictures linked to above at Andrew's About.com:Geology, go to one of my favorite mineral sites: Mindat. Here are the Mindat links for quartz, olivine, and calcite.