| Historically, mineral resources have been the material basis for human survival and social development. Without the sustainable supply and security of mineral resources, economic and social development cannot be maintained. According to the literature, 95% of the world's energy and 80% of industrial raw materials come from fossil fuels, and more than 70% of the world's annual mineral exploitation is non-metallic ore. With the development of society and the progress in science and technology, the demand for non-metallic materials will further increase.To solve China's strategic breakthrough in non-metallic prospecting, in recent years, with the support from Ministry of Science and Technology (973 program), National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Natural Resources (national ready exploration area), China Geological Survey, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and some relevant provinces and cities, geologists in domestic scientific research institutes and colleges have obtained a large amount of geological data, and have made significant progress in developing new understanding for prospecting, based on detailed field geological surveys and indoor analysis. To welcome the 20th CPC National Congress, some of the research results were published in Acta Geoscientica Sinica as a special issue of “non-metallic minerals”. The main contents are related to non-metallic mineralogy (describing mineralogy, theoretical min-eralogy, applied mineralogy, mineralogy, and inclusions in minerals, etc.), petrology (petrology of regional magmatic rocks, metamorphic rocks, sedimentary rocks, basic theories, and applied research achievements in experimental petrology), non-metallic mineral deposits, ore deposit geochemistry (including fluid inclusions, stable isotopes and metallogenic simulation experiments), petrology and mineralogy related to ore deposits, tectonic evolution, and metallogenic studies, etc.This special issue includes five parts: mix and match, non-metallic mineral resources development theory and technical articles, clean energy, strategic non-metallic and prospecting method prospecting prediction papers. This preface makes a brief introduction to all the articles in this special issue. I hope the research results of this special issue can be helpful and provide the reference for theory research and implementation of nonmetallic minerals prospecting breakthrough. |