November 13, 2023 — As offshore wind developers run into glauconite, a mineral that presents challenges for wind turbine installation, the U.S. Geological Survey is conducting a monthslong study to identify exactly where glauconite is already known to be.
The study began in early summer, after some offshore wind developers found glauconite on parts of the seafloor they’ve leased for wind farms — a series of discoveries that The Light reported on last month. Government geologists will focus on a variety of seafloor features that might challenge renewable energy infrastructure, including shallow pockets of natural gas and underwater landslides as well as glauconite.
In the coming months, scientists will review data from the last wide-scale effort to sample the U.S. Atlantic seafloor for glauconite — which happened in the 1960s and 1970s.
“This is a study that doesn’t involve collecting new data,” said Laura Brothers, a marine geologist with the Geological Survey, in an interview with The Light. “We’re going to be combing through all the publicly available and trusted sources of data regarding things that can be hazardous for infrastructure placement and development offshore.”
The study will also examine glauconite deposits on land. “We’ll look at where glauconite is known to occur onshore and what layers of rocks are known to have it,” Brothers said, “to get the best idea we can about where it can be offshore. It’s kind of the best we can do without collecting a substantial amount of new data.”