
Open pit or underground?
How mining engineers decide between digging down from the surface or tunnelling underground, and what drives the switch…

Grade, cut-off and why they move
Grade measures how much metal sits in a tonne of rock. Cut-off grade decides whether that rock is worth mining at all — and…

Mining without digging
How in-situ recovery and heap leaching extract metal by dissolving it underground or in engineered piles, without…

Artisanal and small-scale mining
Millions of people mine by hand, supplying a significant share of some critical materials. Here is what that means for the…

The life of a mine
From first rock sample to final rehabilitation, a mine takes decades to build, run and close — here is why that timeline is…

Tailings and waste rock
Most of what a mine digs up is not the product. This article explains where that material goes and why it matters.