Glossary
The terms the atlas cannot avoid, each in one or two plain sentences. Where a term appears with a dotted underline, the same definition shows when you point at it or move to it with the keyboard.
- Baseline water stress
- How much of the available water in a river basin is withdrawn each year, as modelled by WRI Aqueduct. A property of the place, not of a site's own water use.
- Concentrate
- Ore after the first processing step at or near the mine, with most waste rock removed. It still has to be smelted or refined.
- Coverage
- The share of world production that lies in countries where the atlas has at least one matching site on record. It measures the data, not the industry.
- Deposit
- A body of ore that is known but not mined. The atlas never counts a deposit or a project as a mine.
- End-of-life recycling input rate
- The share of a material's total input that comes from recycled end-of-life products. Published for the European Union only.
- HHI (Herfindahl–Hirschman index)
- A measure of concentration: the sum of the squared percentage shares of all countries. 10,000 means one country produces everything; below 1,500 is usually called unconcentrated.
- HS6 code
- The six-digit customs code under which a traded product is recorded. Trade data follows these codes, which rarely match one material exactly.
- Refining
- Turning ore or concentrate into metal or chemicals pure enough to use. It often happens in a different country from the mine.
- Reserves
- The part of a deposit that could be mined economically today. Not the same as what is in the ground, and not a forecast of production.