Abstract
Exploration of the United States Arctic during the past century, at first largely by government agencies but increasingly by industry, has identified the existence of major resources of coal, zinc, lead, and copper as well as significant occurrences of oil shale, phosphate, gold, silver, and other commodities.1 The Arctic Slope coal deposits alone constitute a large part of the coal resources of the United States. The zinc-lead and copper deposits are sufficiently large that they may well influence the worldwide mining of these commodities in future years. These large mineral deposits of Arctic Alaska represent billions of dollars of commodities in the ground, but the area’s remoteness, harsh climate, and environmental and land status problems have been major obstacles to the exploitation of the region.
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© 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
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Miller, T.P. (1984). Mineral Resources: Arctic Alaska. In: Westermeyer, W.E., Shusterich, K.M. (eds) United States Arctic Interests. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5262-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5262-7_4
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