Recent Cooperative Research Projects

Many research program activities occur at the DNR Lands and Minerals facility in Hibbing. The facility includes both a laboratory and an outdoor research site. The research site hosts ongoing short and long term experiments and provides a place to install and conduct new research initiatives to enhance the program objectives. The Hibbing research facility also serves as the home base for supporting DNR research studies across the mining region. The cooperative research program commonly pools resources with the mining industry and their representatives, academic and research institutions, and other State agencies to enhance the scale and scope of research activities. A collection of over 40 years of environmental research is available on the Lands and Minerals Division research webpage.

The most recent DNR research work includes two reports. One of the reports compares results between standard ASTM humidity cells and a specialized column kinetic test and demonstrates how specialized column test work can improve waste characterization programs. The other evaluates a method for calculating sulfide mineral reaction rates from individual sulfide grains collected from field and laboratory rock weathering experiments.

Additionally, the research group was involved in research projects related to geomembrane integrity and the microbiology of Duluth Complex rock weathering experiments. The geomembrane integrity study is being conducted at the Hibbing field research site in collaboration with the Fabricated Geomembrane Institute. The microbiology study analyzed materials sampled from experiments conducted at the DNR Hibbing field and laboratory research site.