Students love it. Faculty live for it. What is it? Research! Geological research gives us insight into what our world looks like and how it works. What sort of studies do we undertake? Here is a list of the last few, including names of students involved with each project.
If you want more information about our research or how research fits our goal of providing excellent geology instruction, please feel free to contact any member of our staff.
All the high-grade iron ore in northern Minnesota is long gone...or is it? Large-scale open-pit iron mining has been carried out on the Iron Range for over 100 years, and the known big high-grade deposits were mined out about 50 years ago; since then, only low-grade "taconite" ore has been mined. Conventional wisdom holds that high-grade iron ore in Minnesota formed near the surface as groundwater percolated downward into iron-rich sedimentary rocks ("iron formation") and dissolved out pretty much everything except the iron ore minerals. According to this view, there is little or no high-grade iron ore left. However, it is possible that the fluids came up from below. If so, could more high-grade iron ore exist deeper below the surface?
At MSU, students are using techniques for analyzing the chemistry and temperature of the ore fluid to enable us to identify its source. We are analyzing microscopic bubbles of this fluid that were trapped when minerals associated with the high grade ore grew, and we are looking at fine detail of mineral structure beneath an electron beam. If fluid that produced the high-grade ore flowed upward from below, there may be deeper high-grade iron ore. If that is true, the economy of northern Minnesota may be energized and the U.S. may be able to produce more of its own iron.
