ALBERTA’S MINERAL MAPPING PROGRAM: TRANSITIONING FROM DATA ACQUISITION TO ACTIONABLE INSIGHT

In November 2021, the Government of Alberta released the Renewing Alberta’s Mineral Future report -- a strategy and action plan for Alberta to better understand, characterize, and capitalize on its untapped mineral potential. This strategy provided the Alberta Geological Survey (AGS) with the unique opportunity to initiate a massive investigation and data acquisition program.

Through this program, decades worth of historical data have been compiled and digitized, several thousand rock samples and >50,000 m of core have been compositionally analyzed, >35,000 km² of satellite-based multispectral data has been processed, >1,000,000 line-km of high quality airborne geophysical data now blankets the entire province, 312 wells have been sampled for lithium brine, among many other new datasets.

Public geoscience is at the core of the program so data and information are published in a variety of formats. We are leveraging online interactive applications to provide our stakeholder groups access to the data they’ve told us they want. Three key applications currently available on our website are the Alberta Interactive Mineral Map, Core Data Interactive Map, and the Alberta Geology, Minerals, and Energy Infrastructure Interactive Mapping Application.

Even as data acquisition and publications continue, these massive and diverse datasets are being integrated to draw insight into Alberta’s geology and resources. Insights include newly defined structures in the Precambrian basement and the identification of new field targets from the analysis of remote sensing and surface geochemistry data. Structural and compositional investigations of the basement are being integrated with 40,424 gas analyses to help link helium accumulations to radioactive basement sources of helium and heat, gas and fluid migration pathways, and the distribution of carrier gases like CH₄, CO₂, and N₂.

This presentation will provide an overview of the Mineral Mapping Program, highlight the diverse and extensive datasets that have been collected, illustrate how this extensive collection is being made easily accessible to diverse stakeholder groups, and preview some new insights into Alberta’s emerging resources.