Minerals in Belgium

• Minerals in Belgium
• «Belgian» Minerals
• Images
• Links

Minerals in Belgium

The Belgian soil has relatively few mineral occurrences which are (or were) economically profitable.
These are, with some exceptions, situated in and to the south of the valleys of the rivers Sambre and Meuse.

The most abundantly occurring mineral is calcite, which is, among others, exploited in large quarries in the Meuse valley (in the Namur region).

Mineralization of iron, lead en zinc occur, among others, in the synclinal of Namur and to the east of Charleroi as far as Germany.
They are at the base of the iron and zinc industry in Belgium.
So pyrite and galena (respectively lead and iron ore) were exploited in the basin of Namur.

Fluorite as mined south of the rivers Sambre and Meuse and further down south, in the region of Givet (France).

Also quartz is abundantly present.

In the past there has been a small exploitation of sulpher in the region of Theux, and those with a lot of patience can still find in some Ardennes rivers a gold nugget, but it isn’t economically profitable at all, although there have been however in the (distant) past some small exploitations.

There are furthermore in Belgium around 200 minerals, which mainly due to the small quantities have no economic importance.
Many of these minerals only occur very sporadic, as micro-minerals in small cavities in rocks.

Now and then are there still «new» minerals which get discovered, i.e. minerals of which it was still unknown that they occurred here.
But it then concerns such tiny quantities, which are only of scientific interest.

«Belgian» Minerals

When a very new mineral is discovered, the location where the discovery was made gets always explicitly mentioned in the scientific description of the new mineral.
This location is then called the type locality.

• ardennite, found at Salmchâteau in 1872;
• delvauxite, found at Berneau in 1793;
• koninckite, found at Richelle in 1884;
• ottrelite, found at Ottré in 1809;
• willemite, found at Moresnet in 1829.

Images

Barite from Blaton	Calcite from Mont-sur-Marchienne	Galena from Resteigne	Quartz from Opprebais
Turquoise from Vielsalm

Links

• Belgian minerals