Cape Girardeau County and other parts of Southeast Missouri are included in a four-state, 7,500-square-mile region that has a wealth of untapped mineral resources, a new study shows.

The research findings by federal and state scientists will be released at a public meetings in St. Louis today and Thursday.

Dennis R. Kolata of the Illinois State Geological Survey office in Champaign, Ill., said the study is designed to spark more exploration and use of mineral resources, something that would aid the region's economy.

"The whole point is to stimulate the economy," said Kolata, who participated in the study.

"It's for the mining industry, the oil and gas industry; it's for anybody who is in the business of developing and producing mineral resources of any kind.

"What we want to do is stimulate the minerals industry, and a lot of these people are here tonight," he said Tuesday in a telephone interview from the St. Louis Airport Hilton Hotel where he and others were preparing for the public meeting.

About 200 people, including representatives of the mineral industries, universities, and federal and state agencies, are expected to attend the meeting.

The meeting culminates of a five-year study of the Paducah quadrangle region, which includes all or parts of 17 counties in Illinois, seven in Missouri, eight in Kentucky and one in Indiana.

Included in the region are Cape Girardeau County and parts of Bollinger, Mississippi, Perry, Scott, Ste. Genevieve and Stoddard counties. The region also encompasses much of Southern Illinois, including Pulaski and Union counties and a part of Alexander County.

The study was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey and the geological surveys of the four states.

"It was an exhaustive study to look at nearly every economically important mineral resource," said Kolata.

The findings indicate the region has large amounts of "undiscovered" mineral resources, including barium, cobalt, copper, coal, oil, natural gas, lead, zinc, silver, limestone, sand, gravel and clay.

"The Paducah quadrangle and immediate environs comprise one of the most abundantly endowed fuel and non-fuel mineralized areas in the world," said Martin Goldhaber, a U.S. Geological Survey geochemist in Denver, and the principal organizer of the St. Louis meeting.

While the study points the way toward possible undiscovered resources, Goldhaber said, detailed exploration and development of any minerals in the region would be left to the mining industry.

The National Mineral Resource Assessment Program study is the first to use new technology to produce computer-generated maps that depict distribution of various minerals throughout the quadrangle.

"There have been other kinds of mineral resource studies done in the past, but this one is different, it uses a new kind of computer technology," Kolata said.

"These kinds of maps are a tool to help find the areas with the greatest potential of a particular kind of mineral resource," he added.

"We certainly hope that it will lead to the discovery of mineral resources, and in that way it will stimulate the economy and be good for the states, and good for the country."