mineral systems
Mineralisation, deposit, resource, reserve and ore are five different things, and only the first two are geological. Lithoen can describe rock; it cannot say what is worth mining, and this article explains why the distinction is enforced by machine rather than left to good intentions.
About: Porphyry copper system
The USGS porphyry copper model defines its subject explicitly: ore is rock in which the concentration, value, location and recoverability of copper and molybdenum are such as to enable mining under predetermined economic requirements. Value and recoverability are inside the definition. They are not consequences of it.[1]
It follows that no amount of geology can establish that a body of rock meets the definition. A rock can be shown to contain copper; whether that copper counts as ore depends on the price of copper, the depth of the rock, the cost of power, the law of the country and the state of the market on the day the question is asked. Lithoen holds none of those, so Lithoen never uses the word as an assertion about anything it describes.[1,2]
Mineralisation is the geological presence of concentrated minerals. A deposit is a body of it. A resource and a reserve are classifications that add economic and engineering judgement, made inside frameworks with their own definitions, signed off by people with professional liability for the answer. Each rung adds something Lithoen does not assert.[1]
Presence is the rung below all of them, and it is where most confusion begins. Copper is present in every basalt on Earth. That fact tells you nothing about whether copper can be won from any particular basalt, and a corpus that blurs the two is not being generous, it is being wrong.[1]
A rule of style survives about as long as the attention of the person applying it. Lithoen therefore refuses the vocabulary in code: a validator scans every published entity summary, claim statement, article paragraph, hub overview and image caption for economic language — assertions of economic viability, reserve categories, promotional gradings of deposit size, numerical rankings of ground, and advice about where a hole should go — and fails the build if it finds any.[1]
The gate has no exceptions and no override, and it applies to this article. An earlier draft of the paragraph above set out the banned phrases as a list of examples; the build refused it, and the list was replaced by a description. That is the correct outcome: a rule that can be suspended for the page explaining the rule is not a rule.[1]
Often said
“Ore is simply rock that contains a useful metal.”
What the evidence supports
Ore, as the USGS deposit model defines it, is rock in which concentration, value, location and recoverability together enable mining under predetermined economic requirements. A rock containing a useful metal is mineralised; whether it meets that definition is not a geological question.
Supporting records: ore-is-economic
Often said
“A large mineral deposit is the same thing as a large resource.”
What the evidence supports
A resource is a classification made within an economic and engineering framework. Lithoen implements no such framework and makes no statement in that category.
Supporting records: mineralisation-not-resource
Bracketed references link to the structured entity records whose claims support each paragraph. Last updated 2026-09-07.