The demand for minerals has increased with the growing production of standard technologies, such as EV car batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. However, major mining companies need help to satisfy the demand at the current rate, leading to inconsistent and expensive supply chains and environmental and geopolitical concerns. Technology companies should consider backward vertical integration strategies to mitigate against risks associated with supply chain issues, which would merge upstream processes essential to companies' value chains. By doing so, they can mitigate the mine's health, safety, and ecological impacts by employing the latest mining technologies.

On February 6, 2023, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck at a depth of about 11 miles (17.9 km) in Gaziantep province in Turkey (https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/2023-turkey-and-syria-earthquake-faqs). At least 120 aftershocks have been felt around the region, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). At least 41,000 people have lost their lives till date (February 15th, 2023) and the number continues to rise. The natural disaster has aggravated the preexisting humanitarian need in the region as many Syrian refugees are concentrated in the 10 affected provinces of southern Turkey, and Syria, and have been already suffering from over a decade of civil war.

Sub-Saharan Africa faces immense challenges in its bid to attract capital to develop its energy resources and grow its economy. Relative to the pace of market penetration of cell phone services in the recent past, the growth in the share of the population with access to electricity has been rather dismal. The comparisons between both sectors are not new and have been made repeatedly over the years. This commentary recognizes that there are substantial differences between both sectors that make direct comparisons and a transfer of policy lessons difficult. It then identifies some key enablers of cellular telephony growth in Africa that can be applied to the electric power sector and refashions them into broad policy guidelines for boosting the pace of the energy transition on the subcontinent.

This report is part of the Colorado Oil Shale Environmental Program, a major complex of studies and activities begun in 1971 to provide information and guidance for oil shale development in Colorado. This final report "Impact Analysis and Development Patterns Related to an Oil Shale Industry: Regional Development and Land Use Study" was prepared for the Colorado West Area Council of Governments, the Oil Shale Regional Planning Commission, and the Regional Development and Land Use Planning Steering and Monitoring Committee by THK Associates, in cooperation with the Denver Research Institute and Bickert, Browne and Coddington. The major objective of this study of community impacts was to provide decision-makers the necessary information on which to base planning in order to mitigate the potentially great impacts of an oil shale industry. As study of impacts, it deals more with the hardware requirements of communities—schools, housing, sewers, land use, water—than the people impacts. It provides valuable regional timetables and quantification of the necessary growth hardware. As such, this report should be invaluable to the region in planning.

This overview of the status of oil shale was prepared by the State of Colorado, at the request of Mr. Paul Petzrick, Director of Shale Resource Applications for the U.S. Department of Energy. The Executive Director's Office, Department of Natural Resources, accomplished this task with the help of the Colorado Energy Research Institute. (Note that the Colorado Geological Society assisted along with other Federal and State agencies.) The material in this briefing book provides a general background to oil shale and the potential impacts of its development. It is not meant as a technical discussion of all the issues and problems associated with the development of this energy resource. Rather, it is intended as an overview for those people not intimately knowledgeable concerning Colorado and its oil shale resource.

The Phase I report is organized into the following chapters: Chapter 1. Geomorphology of Piceance Creek Basin; Chapter 2. The natural vegetation in the landscape pf the Colorado oil shale region; Chapter 3. Ecosystems and their natural and artificial rehabilitation; Chapter 4. Evaluation of mining techniques; Chapter 5. Physical and chemical characteristics of overburden, spoils, and soils; Chapter 6. Characteristics of spent shale which influence water quality, sedimentation and plant growth medium; and Chapter 7. Water requirement for stabilizing and vegetating spent shale in the Piceance Basin. The Phase II report is organized into Phase II-A Vegetative stabilization of spent oil shales and Phase II-B Revegetation of disturbed surface soils in various vegetation ecosystems in the Piceance Basin.

In 1973, the functions of the Oil Shale Regional Planning Commission were incorporated into the newly formed Colorado West Area Council of Governments. The governing board of the Council is made up of a member of the Board of County Commissioners from each of the four counties (Garfield, Mesa, Rio Blanco, and Moffat) in Planning and Management Region 11, and an elected representative from each county representing the municipalities. The Council continued the investigations begun by the Oil Shale Regional Planning Commission. The findings and recommendations of the Regional Development and Land Use Study are summarized in this report.

The impacts of the invasion of Ukraine on agricultural exports and fertilizers, the food price hikes, the inflationary pressures, the unsustainable debt levels for many countries, and the possible global economic recession are severely impacting African economies and communities. In addition, the climate is changing, and Africa needs to adapt. It must adapt to rising temperatures, more extreme storms, and floods, rising sea levels, more intense heatwaves, and longer and more severe droughts. Yet though the risks are great, so also are the opportunities that successful adaptation can bring.

Collapsible Soils in Colorado describes the geologic setting, the geomorphic and soil conditions, locations of potential susceptibility, and engineering properties of collapsible soils in Colorado. This bulletin is the result of a comprehensive and multi-year effort to understand collapsing soil behavior and the geologic and geomorphic conditions where they can form. In addition, this report contains a 1:1,000,000-scale map of Colorado that shows locations of soil collapse compiled from soil test data and damage incidents, climatic exclusions zones, and areas of the state where collapse-prone soil may exist. Collapsible soils are a widespread geologic hazard in the state, common in almost all semi-arid non-mountainous areas. The CGS program addressing this particular geohazard has increased public and professional awareness of collapsible soils. At the same time, through robust evaluation and research, it has improved the existing geological and geotechnical professional standard-of-practice related to the hazard. Note: The Association of American State Geologists announced that their annual John C. Frye Memorial Award for 2009 is granted to the CGS and the staff members who authored EG-14.