MINING DISTRICTS DATABASES OF NEW MEXICO

For the past 75 years, the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (NMBGMR) has collected information on mining districts in the state of New Mexico. This information, mostly on paper, is currently being transformed to digital format. Once this information has been organized into a relational database, a geographical information system (GIS) will be used for storing, modifying, querying, analyzing, and displaying information on mining districts within the geographic space of New Mexico. Mining district information was researched from texts and maps then entered into Microsoft's Access 97. The mining districts database consists of a finite collection of tables, which are linked to one another through use of a unique alphanumeric mining district identification (id). This alphanumeric mining district id termed "key" allows for information to be queried, entered without redundancy, and reported as standard output. Another advantage of the relational database is that it conserves storage space and decreases output time. Using Access for the database also allows for information to be readily supplied to ArcView. ArcView spatially represents the districts as polygon features. These features contain many attributes that describe measurements or values for the features. Attributes included in the database, but not limited to, are locations, production, reserves, aliases, photographs, chemical analyses, bibliographies, counties, cultural resources, and hydrologic data of the mining districts. The mining district database is part of a larger New Mexico Mines database. This database will provide data for federal, state, local agencies, public organizations, private industry, and individual citizens to make informed decisions about resources development, management, land use and environmental impacts.