A western view of mining geophysics in the U.S.S.R.

A five-man delegation of American geophysicists visited the U.S.S.R. for a month during the early fall of 1973 as members of an official technical exchange program in mining geophysics and potential field methods.The state of the art of mining geophysics in the Soviet Union has progressed significantly and exhibit, among others, the following strong points: (1) The total national effort in the field is well coordinated, minimizing costly and time-consuming duplication typical of the industrial approach of the Western world. (2) Planning of programs is well coordinated between geologists and geophysicists even at the highest level. (3) The approach to a mineral exploration program is well integrated, beginning with regional crustal studies and continuing on an increasingly more detailed scale to methods in defining and analyzing specific ore bodies. (4) The development and use of a number of innovative techniques that are essentially unknown in the West.