Deep-seated and concealed mineral deposits represent a major opportunity for securing the sustainable supply of critical raw materials required for Europe’s energy, digital and industrial transitions. However, exploring mineral resources at greater depths and beneath geological cover remains technically challenging, costly, and uncertain. Reducing these uncertainties requires a new generation of exploration approaches capable of integrating geological knowledge with advanced sensing, geophysical imaging, geochemistry, Earth observation, automated data processing, and predictive modelling.

This session invites contributions presenting innovative technologies, methodologies and integrated workflows for the exploration of mineral resources, from early-stage geological targeting to field validation and demonstration. Particular attention will be given to approaches that combine complementary datasets and technologies across different spatial scales and improve our ability to identify indirect geological, geochemical, geophysical and spectral expressions of mineralisation at depth.

We particularly encourage contributions linked to recent advances in remote and proximal sensing, passive and active geophysics, UAV-based measurements, hyperspectral imaging, robotics, artificial intelligence and multi-source data integration are creating new possibilities for detecting, characterising and assessing deep mineral systems. These technologies can improve exploration targeting while reducing drilling requirements, operational costs, environmental disturbance and the time needed to move from regional-scale prospectivity assessment to deposit-scale investigation.

This session is promoted by DEXPLORE project entitled Recognising European potential for hosting deep land primary CRM by combining new mineral models and advanced exploration and visualisation techniques (Grant Agreement: 101178897), funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.