Mineral reflectance spectra and chemistry of 29 rare earth-bearing minerals and rare earth oxide powders including niobium- and tantalum-oxide powder

The data set contains mineral chemical analyses of 32 rare earth element (REE) -bearing minerals (REMin) and rare-earth oxides (REO) and their corresponding hyperspectral spectra. The hyperspectral data was acquired with the HySpex system in a range of 400 – 2500 nm and is presented in a spectral library. The resulting reflectance data are scaled from 0 - 10000. The two Rare Earth Element (REE) libraries consist of the spectra of 16 rare earth oxides powders (REO) and 14 REE-bearing minerals (REMin). In addition, it contains the spectra of niobium- and tantalum oxide, two elements technically not part of the REEs. The spectral library presented here is part of a bigger collection of spectral libraries including copper-bearing surface samples from Apliki copper-gold-pyrite mine (Koerting et al., 2019a, http://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.1.4.2019.005) and copper-bearing minerals (Koellner et al., 2019, http://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.1.4.2019.003). These libraries aim to give a spectral overview of important resources and ore mineralization.