Community | July 18, 2012 | 15 comments

Afghanistan minerals fully mapped

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18882996

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LivingPong

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18882996

Afghanistan has become the first country whose surface minerals have been mapped from the air.

The US Geological Survey released the results of a "hyperspectral imaging" effort, in which reflections of light shone from an aircraft are analysed.

Different minerals - as well as snow or vegetation - reflect specific colours, resulting in a "mineral map".

The map comprises more than 800 million data points corresponding to an area of 440,000 sq km, some 70% of the country.

Afghanistan is known to have vast reserves of oil, gas, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium. In late 2011, a consortium of Indian companies inked a deal to begin mining some of the country's large stores of iron.

But the country is known to have a wider array of mineral resources; in 2010, the Afghan ministry of mines claimed a value of its reserves of nearly a trillion dollars, then carrying out tours to promote investment in them.

But it remains to pin down which economically viable minerals are where, an effort for which the USGS's hyperspectral imaging expertise was enlisted.

In a series of 28 flights over 43 days, the USGS gathered the data by shining visible and infrared light from a height of 15,000m and using a camera to capture the reflections. Each "pixel" of the camera was analysed and correlated with the materials that reflect at a given colour.

The USGS public release of the data includes two maps: one of iron and iron-bearing minerals, and one of minerals principally containing carbon, silicon, or sulphur.

Afghanistan has reportedly some $1 Trillion in fossil and mineral resources!

continued at...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18882996
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15 comments // Afghanistan minerals fully mapped

  • cw9000
  • artemis6
  • Incredulous
  • LivingPong
    • +1
      LivingPong  
    • Incredulous:

      Bin Laden was a CIA asset and overseen by Bush senior. I think he handed over approx 3 Billion to him in cash, though the video is a little difficult to find of Bushy passing a suitcase with the details in it to him these days when he visited him in Afghanistan.

      Dang I canT find it in my huge datA mines

    • 9 months ago
  • remanns
  • remanns
    • +6
      remanns  

    • Just remember - "The map is NOT the territory" ( Robert Anton Wilson )

      p.s. - that is , in THIS case,....we may make a GOOD map,.....but GOOD LUCK taking the territory. Just saying' .

    • 9 months ago
  • WagonMaster
    • +5
      WagonMaster  

    • I always wondered just why we were spending American Treasure and lives on that backwards- piece -of -crap -dope- growing - collection of ignorant, un-washed-girl child killing, woman beating ass-cracks. Now I know what i suspected...FINANCIAL GAIN FOR SOMEONE.

    • 10 months ago
  • LivingPong
    • +3
      LivingPong  
    • WagonMaster:

      Don't confuse originally Western trained, armed and financed drug smugglers and Taliban with the general population. The people of Afghanistan are generally trying to avoid being killed by drug smugglers, Taliban and accidents caused by NATO bombs.
      The people of Afghanistan hate the drug smugglers and Taliban and are also bloody scared of them.

    • 10 months ago
  • WagonMaster
    • +4
      WagonMaster  
    • LivingPong:

      No confusion... I realize the common Afghani has little recourse but to try to save his/her own hide...I was speaking in metiphorical generalities, carried away by the heat of my thoughts at all of those needlessly slaughtered in a frustratingly inept method of obtaining mineral rights from a downtrodden populace whose only profit will be more death and destruction
      I wonder which Western group trained the drug dealers....Columbian...Mexican...American..or the originators-- Turks, Arabs or Congolese for instance. And although Westerners didn't actually invent the slave trade, we certinally profited by it...as an example of implied guilt. As to who trained whom may be a moot point...this has been going on, unchanged since Alexander the Great and to ascribe Western guilt in the drug trade, while fashionable may be a little incorrect.

    • 10 months ago
  • LivingPong
  • LivingPong
    • +4
      LivingPong  
    • WagonMaster:

      Reagan and the Saudis and Pakistan ISI (helped to be set up by Reagan) trained the top Taliban at secret US installations in the US in terrorism and surveillance and bomb making techniques. British Special Forces trained the Northern Alliance in similar techniques and Australian SAS also conducted covert operations. The CIA traded weapons for drugs.

      UnoCal got the gas rights and the Taliban were employed to protect the gas pipelines until the West defeated the USSR interests then abandoned the 30,000 trained militia when they withdrew from major operations in the 1980's. None of the home countries wanted the trained militia back and refused to accept their passports or citizenship, so they probably all when nuts and AWOL.

    • 9 months ago
  • trut
    • +3
      trut  

    • Now the globalists will start dividing it up between themselves, with assurances of security from the military industrial complex.

    • 10 months ago
  • treewolf39
  • LivingPong
  • LivingPong
    • +3
      LivingPong  
    • treewolf39:

      Heck they've been geo-mineral mapping since at least the 80's in Australia that I've noticed. You know the planes with round pods on the bottom or the weird ones with three tails? They all map minerals from the air.

    • 9 months ago

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