Australia's Identified Mineral Resources 2009: Economic Demonstrated Resources and Trends

18 mineral commodities saw increased Economic Demonstrated Resources (EDR) in 2008, while nine saw decreases. Australia's EDR for brown coal, mineral sands, nickel, silver, uranium, zinc, and lead are the world's largest. The dataset, from Geoscience Australia, provides analysis of mineral exploration expenditures and resource life estimates for the calendar year 2008.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in resource availability based on reported increases and decreases in Economic Demonstrated Resources for 18 commodities.
• Benchmark Australia's global mineral ranking based on its top-six worldwide positions for commodities like bauxite, iron ore, and lithium.
• Estimate resource sustainability by calculating indicative resource life from AEDR to production ratios mentioned for commodities like diamonds and gold.
• Study the impact of global market factors on mining investment based on the description of multinational corporate decision-making.

Strengths

• Covers 18 specific mineral commodities with reported changes in Economic Demonstrated Resources.
• Provides global ranking context, stating Australia holds the world's largest EDR for 7 commodities.
• Includes analysis of resource life estimates, with specific figures for commodities like diamonds (10 years) and gold (30 years).
• Focuses on a specific calendar year (2008) for exploration expenditure analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last updated 2026-04-20 03:42:25.717092; freshness should be verified as the underlying data is from 2009.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Likely compiled from national mineral resource assessments and exploration reporting.

Time Range

Primary analysis for calendar year 2008, with some decade-long trend analysis (1997-2008).

Freshness

Data reflects the 2009 report and 2008 calendar year; last metadata update was 2026-04-20.

Geography

Australia