Geoscience BC project puts more of BC’s public minerals geoscience data on the map

A Geoscience BC project has extracted public geoscience and mineral deposit data from technical reports and made it more readily accessible, searchable, and locatable.

Although freely available to the public, the geoscience information recorded by mineral exploration and mining companies in National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101) technical reports submitted to the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) are not easily connected to a point on a map.

Previously, it was time-consuming and difficult to locate and integrate this valuable data with other geoscience data.

Results of a new Geoscience BC project extracted and updated 2,763 MINFILE occurrences from data contained within 996 NI 43-101 reports, and added coordinates for each report. Reports’ locations and their relation to geology and mineral exploration projects can now be easily seen.

“Data that cannot be accessed easily does not get used. We worked with the CSA to access the reports, and developed a method to find the B.C. reports and extract the important geoscience data within them,” geologist and project lead, Nicole Barlow of Purple Rock, said in a release. “In addition to MINFILE, people interested in mineral deposits in B.C. can now find the information we mined from the reports in a new database that can be viewed using Geoscience BC’s Earth Science Viewer online mapping platform, in MapPlace, or downloaded and used in other geographic information system platform (GIS) tools.”

MINFILE is a public inventory of geological, location and economic information for mines, deposits and mineral occurrences in B.C. that is hosted and maintained by the B.C. Geological Survey (BCGS).

Purple Rock added the new geoscience information extracted from the NI 43-101 reports to this inventory, and occurrences on MINFILE are being updated and made publicly available by the BCGS.

The data includes prospecting information; rock, silt, soil, stream sediment and vegetation geochemical sampling data; ground and airborne geophysical surveys; data from surface and underground development; and diamond, reverse-circulation and percussion drilling programs.

“This project has made all of this incredibly valuable geoscience information and mineral deposit data for our province easier to find, locate and use,” added Christa Pellett, Geoscience BC VP for minerals.

View the project page by clicking here.

Geoscience BC generates independent, public geoscience research and data about British Columbia’s minerals, energy and water resources. This advances knowledge, informs responsible development, encourages investment and stimulates innovation.

For more information, visit www.GeoscienceBC.com.