The International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) was established as a means of raising worldwide public and political awareness of the vast, though frequently under-used, potential the Earth Sciences possess for improving the quality of life of the peoples of the world and safeguarding Earth’s rich and diverse environments.

Geophysics is a principal tool for geoscientists that helps decipher not only deeper geology but also formational processes and chronological changes in the physical property contrasts between the causative bodies and the surroundings at the different strata of the subsurface.

Michael S. Zhdanov Editorial for Special Issue “Geophysics for Mineral Exploration”
Jianfei Fu, Sanshi Jia and Ende Wang Combined Magnetic, Transient Electromagnetic, and Magnetotelluric Methods to Detect a BIF-Type Concealed Iron Ore Body: A Case Study in Gongchangling Iron Ore Concentration Area, Southern Liaoning Province, China
Fouzan A. Alfouzan, Abdulrahman M. Alotaibi, Leif H. Cox and Michael S. Zhdanov Spectral Induced Polarization Survey with Distributed Array System for Mineral Exploration: Case Study in Saudi Arabia

The mining towns in northern Canada are remote from good roads but they are surrounded by lakes. Aircraft, mounted on floats instead of wheels, serve as a practical means of transport in the forested wilderness. After the ice had melted from the lakes in the early summer of 1961, I found myself —a young Scot with a good recent degree in physics but minimum training for the task ahead—disembarking from a float-plane on the shore of a large lake in northern Manitoba, 80 kilometres from the nearest town where the mining company that employed me had its headquarters. My companions were five Cree Indians and a cook, and for the rest of the short northern summer my job would be to use geophysical equipment to search for potential sources of nickel in the geological structures buried beneath the forest floor. This was my initiation to the world of geophysical exploration. It convinced me to change from physics to a career as a geophysicist. In addition to teaching and laboratory research it involved annual fieldwork that took me into less developed areas of the world where interesting geological problems could be addressed.