Why are we deploying this

seismic array:

The island of Newfoundland preserves some of the most important information about plate tectonics! Hundreds of millions of years ago, a vast ocean separated eastern and western parts of Newfoundland. Continents collided, forming the Appalachian mountain belt and the Pangea supercontinent. Later, a new ocean was born - the Atlantic - but the continent broke apart in a different place... so the rocks of eastern Newfoundland are also found in Spain, Portugal and northwest Africa. We know quite a lot about these processes from surface geology, but to understand them fully, we need to look much deeper into the Earth's crust and mantle beneath the island.

What does all this have to do with critical minerals:

We need critical minerals to build all of the infrastructure, such as solar panels, wind turbines, and electric car batteries, that Canada is going to need to achieve NetZero by 2050. Finding these critical minerals is challenging because we do not entirely understand how they form and where to find them. In Australia, they have discovered a link between structures within the deep crust/lithosphere and the location of critical mineral deposits at the Earth's surface. Through this PACMIN project, we will finally have the opportunity to image the deep crust and lithosphere beneath the island, which is something that has never been attempted at this scale before. This information will improve our understanding of the deep tectonic processes that played a role in the island's formation and will help us better understand where we might find the resulting critical minerals that we need to transition to a green economy.