Penn State Dec. 8 EarthTalk: PA State Geologist Gale Blackmer Sees 'Promising Opportunities' For Critical Minerals Production

Gale Blackmer, the Pennsylvania state geologist and director of the Bureau of Geological Survey in the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, will deliver a public talk at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 8, in 112 Walker Building on Penn State's University Park campus.

The free presentation, titled “Critical Minerals Research at the Pennsylvania Geological Survey,” is part of the EarthTalks series held by the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. 

It will be available via Zoom as well.

The state Geological Survey began collecting and sharing information about Pennsylvania’s mineral resources in 1836. 

With the advent of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI) in 2019, the survey started investigating critical minerals in particular.

“While Pennsylvania is unlikely to be a dominant supplier of critical minerals, there are promising opportunities for more ‘boutique’ production, and certainly there is a lot of interesting science to do in investigating the resources,” Blackmer said in an abstract. “In addition to critical minerals, these investigations provide important side benefits for environmental and groundwater science, geologic hazard evaluation and other mineral and energy resources.”

Designed to help assess critical mineral resources and potential, Earth MRI in Pennsylvania has funded studies of high-alumina underclays, Cornwall-type magnetite skarns in the Gettysburg Basin and Devonian black shales. 

A $4 million aerial geophysical survey of southern Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Front region, including adjacent parts of Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia, revealed anomalies worthy of further investigation, Blackmer said.

She hopes her EarthTalks presentation will spark ideas for additional research, she said, noting the Geological Survey “can bring sample collections, data, maps, reports and scientific expertise to potential collaborations.”

Blackmer holds master’s and doctoral degrees in geology from Penn State and a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Pennsylvania. 

She joined the Bureau of Geological Survey in 1999 as a bedrock geologic mapper working in southeastern Pennsylvania. 

She worked her way up through Mapping Division management to become bureau director in 2015.

Earlier, Blackmer worked in groundwater and environmental consulting and in academia. 

Her talk is part of EarthTalks’ fall 2025 series, “Critical Minerals — A National Economic and Security Imperative,” which focuses on the need for a reliable supply chain of critical minerals and the ongoing research to provide them domestically.

For more about the series, visit the EarthTalks webpage.

(Reprinted from Penn State News.)

Resource Links - Rare Earth, Critical Minerals:

-- Western PA Coalition For Abandoned Mine Reclamation: Penn State, Critical Green Concepts Seeking Acid Mine Drainage Samples To Evaluate For Rare Earth, Critical Mineral Production Potential [PaEN]

-- Penn State Team Awarded US DOE Grant To Develop Extraction & Recovery Technologies For Rare Earth, Other Critical Materials From Coal, Coal Wastes, Acid Mine Drainage  [PaEN]

-- Penn State’s Center For Critical Minerals To Receive $2.1 Million Grant To Build Pilot Plant To Recover Rare Earth Elements, Other Critical Minerals From Acid Mine Drainage  [PaEN]

-- Firepoint Energy Selects Jefferson County Site For Waste Coal-To-Fuel Conversion, Rare Earth Element Recovery Production Site [PaEN]

-- Penn State Center For Critical Minerals Develops New Process To Extract Rare Earth Oxides From Abandoned Mine Drainages, Sludges  [PaEN]

-- Penn State Calls For Taking Next Step To Demonstrate Technology For Recovery Of Rare Earth & Critical Minerals From Mine Drainage, Coal Refuse - Build A Processing Facility  [PaEN]

-- Guest Essay: Seize The Rare Opportunity To Resolve Toxic Mine Drainage - By Robert Hughes, Eastern PA Coalition For Abandoned Mine Reclamation  [PaEN]

-- New Sensor Can Detect Valuable Rare Earth Elements In Mine Drainage, Other Non-Traditional Sources  [PaEN]

[Posted: December 2, 2025]  PA Environment Digest