Overview
Three Kutztown
University
undergraduate students went with me to Beijing and to Inner Mongolia
(northern China)
to study the giant Baiyunebo rare earth element deposit in the summer
2004. The Chinese people were spectacularly welcoming and
friendly, although bureaucracy sometimes impeded progress, like it does
everywhere else in the world.
The Baiyunebo
(Bayan Obo) area is
the world’s largest concentration
of Rare Earth
Elements
(REE) – essential ingredients in
products
ranging from automobile catalytic converters to computer screens and
electric motors. Because Rare Earth Elements are of such
strategic importance, understanding the earth processes that
concentrate REE is of great interest to both the scientific community
and to industry.
 The
goal of this study
is to
help constrain models that explain the formation of the mineral
depsoits by geologic mapping in the field
and chemical analysis in the lab. Understanding the factors that
led
to the
formation of the Baiyunebo deposit will allow for a comparison with
the geological characteristics of other giant REE deposits such as Mountain
Pass (California)
and Olympic
Dam
(Australia), which will
ultimately reveal fundamental, underlying processes of REE migration in
the upper crust.
Click
here for a description of the research with maps, photos, etc.
Throughout the
spring
semester, we prepared for our trip by reading
articles published in the scientific literature by geologists who'd
studied Baiyunebo before us (for example, the United States
Geological Survey paper and Martin
Smith's, work with Paul Henderson). Finding all the
literature can be tricky since there are many different translations of
the name from Chinese characters to Latin spellings (Bayan Obo,
Baiyunebo, Baiyun'ebo).
|
 The first three weeks of our trip
were spent in Beijing where I teach a short course about mineral
deposits for graduate students at the China University of Geosciences -
Beijing (a very highly respected university for geological
studies). It's a great school and the students get amazing
hands-on experience. They even have a well drilling rig for
students to practice on. Click
here to see photos of the campus and life in Beijing.
|
 While in Beijing, we took the
opportunity to do a little tourism. All work and no play makes
Jack a dull boy, you know!
Click
here to see photos of some of our tourist excursions in/around
Beijing.
|
 Then we traveled by night train to
the
city of Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. We visited the Inner Mongolian
Geological Survey before traveling on to Baiyunebo by SUV. Click
here for photos of Hohhot and the surrounding area.
|
 We stayed in the very excellent
town of Baiyunebo while we were doing our fieldwork. Visiting the
town of Baiyunebo is strictly by permission only and visitors without
permission will immediately be turned away upon arrival. I'm very
grateful that we were granted permission to visit the town and region
around the mine (as well as get a mine tour one day!)
Click
here for photos of Baiyunebo and the surrounding Mongolian steppes.
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Geologic investigation of the
Baiyunebo Rare Earth Element District, Inner Mongolia, China –
Integrating undergraduate student learning experiences with faculty
research
