Re-source, re-scale: Finer data scales and changed resource availability perceptions.

Changing environmental data analytics modify perceptions and policies on resources, particularly in terms on mining legitimisations. Enhanced data products are critical for improved planning and execution of extractive activities. Improved data in the mining industry tends to increase definitions and scale levels thus segregating environmental features from each other. This tends to be in conflict with local contingent appreciations of resources and their interactions with broader environmental features and conditions. Data scales and availabilities influence which resource perception dominates and so how mining is justified or antagonised successfully. This paper contributes to discussions that explore resource materialities from analyses of lithium mining. It focuses on the Atacama Salt Flat in contexts of lithium mining and material metrics, and separates itself from focuses on global availability of reserves by taking a narrower discussion on chemical differences that contour abundancy, variety and rarity of materials. This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in 2019 in Chile. It presents the current state of social appreciations on lithium materialities in and around places of extraction in Chile. Centrally, it unpacks an analysis of the social values of lithium and sets grounds for thinking about how a social value of a material becomes prevalent over other social values, particularly in contexts of global material needs and local environmental change for climate change mitigation solutions. • Affordances of data products on the Atacama Salt Flat sustain social values that favour lithium extraction. • Legitimisations to extract materials in the global south benefit from data products that increase metrics and categories of materials. • Contestations to lithium mining in San Pedro de Atacama use dominant discourses that better sustain extraction. • Environmental policy-making need to scrutinise data products from the outset of social values. • Data-driven responsible material sourcing should integrate social value assessments • There is no clear-cut definition of social value respective to the environment and progress on its understanding is context and place specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]