Locations of mines and prospects in Amelia County, Virginia

Critical minerals are essential for the energy transition; to meet sustainability goals, production of these resources must significantly increase within the coming decades. For example, demand for lithium, an element essential for battery technologies found in many electronics and vehicles, is anticipated to increase by more than ten-fold by 2050 compared to current production. Critical minerals occur in Amelia County, Virginia, however, considerable uncertainty remains regarding their location, amount, and types of commodities present. In fulfilling its mission to provide information on mineral resources of the national domain, the U.S. Geological Survey aims to synthesize and disseminate high quality data on mineral sites. Ensuring the accuracy of extracted information involves digitizing and georeferencing historic maps of the area that contain locations of mines and prospects. These maps, compared with records in the Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS; Schweitzer, 2019), were used to produce a harmonized dataset within Amelia County of reconciled, well-attributed mineral sites. Utilizing modern topographic mapping and LiDAR imagery, historical site locations were enhanced with increased accuracy to create a more accurate map of current and former mines and prospects in Amelia County. Data are presented in tabular form with complete bibliographic citations.