UB alum maps minerals for USGS

Bernard Hubbard didn’t set out to map minerals. 

As a geology PhD student at UB, he used satellite and airborne instruments to study volcanoes from above. Later, as a research geologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), he began using this same remote-sensing technology to find mineral deposits, which can contain the critical elements desperately needed for electronics, defense and renewable energy. 

Adapting and growing your expertise was a major part of Hubbard’s advice for Department of Earth Sciences students.

“What you study is not what you’re always going to study,” he told a group of them gathered to hear his seminar on campus this week. “I chose well in having a broader remote-sensing focus because I realized that I could apply it to so many different things. I’ve been able to pivot from planets to volcano hazards to mineral deposits. Most mineral deposits that we mine today are the eroded remnants of the cores of old volcanoes, so in many ways, my career has gone full circle.”

Hubbard was introduced by Tracy Gregg, professor and chair of the Department of Earth Sciences, which recently changed its name from the Department of Geology. 

Gregg traced Hubbard’s deep connections to the department: He earned his PhD in 2001 under Mike Sheridan, professor emeritus of geology who established UB’s volcanology program. Gregg herself was on Hubbard’s dissertation committee. 

“As he said to me when I picked him up at the airport, ‘I’m coming home,’” Gregg said.

Hubbard, who first joined the USGS as a postdoc, is part of the agency’s Earth Mapping Resource Initiative (Earth MRI). Started in 2019 and later infused with $320 million from the bipartisan infrastructure law, the program aims to better assess the nation’s supply of undiscovered minerals and ultimately make it less dependent on other countries.

“These elements are critical for things like wind turbines. Lithium is especially important for batteries in the future,” Hubbard said. “If we’re going to make the clean energy transition, we’re going to need a lot of these materials.”

Earth MRI works with state geological surveys to collect geophysical data and conduct remote sensing and field work to make new geologic maps of the most promising areas. One area they are focusing their sights on is abandoned mines.

“At the time they were mining, they were extracting gold and copper and didn’t care about the tellurium and all the elements that are now critical,” Hubbard explained. “The fact that they took out all the gold and copper means they were inevitably concentrating a lot of these other elements in the waste, which we can now go back and try to reprocess.”

Hubbard is involved with Earth MRI’s hyperspectral imaging component. These instruments, developed by NASA, can scan treeless, arid regions for exposed minerals on the surface based on the wavelengths of light they absorb. 

“Hyperspectral imaging is essentially a slice of hundreds to thousands of wavelengths. We basically look at these dips or absorption features and can determine what are the signatures of the materials that we’re looking at that’s dominating the pixel,” Hubbard said.

Of all the rare earth elements, neodymium is the most detectable because it has intense absorption features and is the most abundant of these in the Earth’s crust. Hubbard said this makes it a potential pathfinder to identify areas that likely have other desirable elements as well.

Students had the chance to ask Hubbard questions following his seminar. Some asked if forests could be mapped after trees shed their foliage for the winter or even after wildfires. 

“It depends on slope, erosion and how much the rains have washed away the charcoal to let you see the soil and rocks,” he said. “With climate change, we’re going to see more of these large fires. As a silver lining, can we use it to enhance our ability to do geologic mapping and mineral exploration in these burn areas?”

Above all, Hubbard told students it’s worth keeping an open mind as they continue their careers. The proof? His hate of sedimentary rocks. 

“When I first started, I loved volcanic rocks and I did not want to have anything to do with sedimentary rocks,” he said to many chuckles and perhaps some agreement from the room. “Be that as it may, it turns out that sedimentary rocks can host mineral deposits. To this day, I can’t stand sediments, but I've learned a lot about them since.”