Review on the progress of geological survey works in Southwest China in the past ten years (2011-2020)

Over the past ten years (2011-2020), with the continuous industrialization in China, there has been a strong demand for energy and mineral resources, meanwhile, the development of ecological civilization has been highly emphasized, the geological works has accordingly gone through transformation and development. A series of significant progresses and achievements have been achieved in geological survey in Southwest China. The authors of this paper, based on the geological project management of China Geological Survey and geological study in Southwest China, combined with the evaluation reports on breakthrough action of strategic mineral prospecting (2011-2020) of the related provinces and the exploration results of oil and gas enterprises, as well as consulting a large number of literatures of various professional fields, comprehensively summarize the progress of geological survey in Southwest China in the past ten years, and the prospect of geological survey in the next decade is put forward. The significant progresses in the past ten years includes: the covered areas of regional geological survey on main scale of 1∶50000 has increased to a greater degree; the understanding of Tethys tectonic structures and evolution and the reconstruction of the Precambrian tectonic and stratigraphic framework of the upper Yangtze block has been deepened; over 1400 new mineral occurrences have been discovered, and the strategic mineral exploration has achieved great breakthroughs such as copper, manganese, aluminum, gold, lithium, crystalline graphite, lead-zinc，phosphorus and natural gas; a number of new areas, new types, new hosting strata of shale gas have been discovered; the early identification, monitoring and early warning of geological disasters in the mountainous areas have been improved; the conditions of hydrogeology and water resources in some key areas and basins have been identified, the difficulties of water supplying of a large number of people in the water deficient areas has been solved; about 53600 square kilometers of selenium-rich land resources has been delineated; some new fields such as ecological geological survey, urban geological survey, resource and environment carrying capacity evaluation and suitability evaluation of land and space development, as well as comprehensive survey of natural resources have emerged, and the related theoretics and technology and methods have been initially practiced and established. The results of the survey have improved the security of some energy and mineral resources of China, and effectively supported and served such areas as the planning and construction of the major engineering projects, the poverty alleviation, the national territory spatial planning, the urban underground space utilization, the ecological environment construction, and the natural resource management, and so on. The transformation and development of geological survey has achieved remarkable results. It can be expected that the geological survey in the next decade will achieve innovative and development in supporting and serving energy and mineral resources security, geological security risk prevention, natural resources comprehensive investigation and monitoring system construction, ecological environment improvement, territorial space utilization, regional geosciences theory, information technology construction of geological survey, and other aspects. This paper can provide an important reference for readers to understand the progress of geological survey and mineral exploration in Southwest China in the past decade and understand the transformation and development of geological works in the new era.