Mineral futures in land-use planning: Foresight tools and case studies in Northern Finland

Abstract

Finland is a Northern country where mineral exploration and mining has significantly increased during the 2000s. At the same time there occurs competition over the right to use land and ecosystem services. Main competitors over land with mineral exploration and mining industry are especially tourism, reindeer herding, and environmental protection. In this study we combine information over geology, location, timescales, and uncertainty to provide mineral related foresight tools: 1) Mine potential tool, and 2) Mineral deposit potential tool. The former is applied to known mineral deposits and targeted mineral exploration, the latter to regional mineral exploration. Cases presented include Sodankylä for nickel, Kolari for iron, copper and gold, and Kittilä for gold. In a long-term foresight, the usefulness of information on mineral exploration licenses proved limited. Better support for the long-term foresight is given by geological potential (prospectivity), time framing and narrative probabilities for known mineral deposits. Visualising the long timescales and uncertainties in a spatial context is the greatest value of these foresight tools. Also the concept of ‘deposit archive’, adopting those detected mineral deposits that have proven uninteresting or uneconomic in the current market environment, provides a valuable insight to availability of raw materials in a long term together with the adaptation of the assessment of undiscovered mineral resources.