About this site

1. Purpose
2. Project Summary
3. Project Personnel
4. Technology Used
5. Future Enhancements

1. Purpose of this site

The Mineral Resources Program (MRP) of the U.S. Geological Survey maintains an Internet web site to provide public access to various forms of digital data. Digital data sets include geology, geochemistry, geophysics, mineral resources, base maps, and other data. Coverage varies from regional to global. We present these data in an interactive map-based format that allows the user to create individualized maps by selecting data sets and map areas.

The MRP invites participation from other federal, state, and local governmental agencies in supplying data to this web site. Because there have been questions in the past concerning ownership and publication rights to digital data sets, the MRP issues this policy statement, which covers all data presented on this web site.

What users will be allowed to do:

• Display all data sets on screen at scales that are appropriate to the data set.
• Overlay data sets in any combination.
• Print simplified explanations (symbols and short descriptions) for all data sets.
• Print small-scale (page-sized) renditions of maps containing any combination of data sets.
• Download plot files to plot maps containing any combination of data sets at user-specified scales.
• Query all data sets.
• Download portions of data sets that are freely available to the public.

What users will not be allowed to do:

• Download any data set or portion thereof which is not freely available to the public.

What MRP will do:

• Provide public access to digital data sets produced by MRP and related data sets from other sources.
• Provide links to other agencies for user access to data sets that are not freely available to the public.

What MRP will not do:

• MRP will not sell or give away any data sets that are not freely available to the public.

We believe that there is an opportunity for cooperation and synergism in this activity. We can offer a single location where users can come to create relatively simple individualized maps and to browse for geoscience-related digital data sets. Users who have needs that are more complex than can be accommodated on the MRP web site will be able to download freely available data for local use. For privately held data sets, we will provide visibility and links to sources for those data sets.

2. Project Summary

The main objectives of the Spatial Information Delivery Project (SIDP) are to: 1) coordinate the generation of complete, seamless, digital databases of geologic, lithologic, geochemical, geophysical, and mineral deposit information in consistent, standard formats; 2) develop methods and tools for serving this data to all customers, both internal and external, over the Internet; 3) develop Internet-based methods and tools for analytical processing of MRP data; and 4) maintain communications with the rest of the USGS on activities which are related to the electronic delivery of spatial data.

3. Project Personnel

To achieve these objectives, the SIDP is composed of a project chief, two Surveys and Analysis project chiefs, four Regional GIS project chiefs, four National Database project chiefs, one representative of all Minerals Information Team (MIT) databases, and technical staff. This group coordinates all major spatial data activities within the MRP including, the collection of new data for the national databases, the transfer of national database information to digital format and, where needed, the development of standard data models and formats for the national databases. The group has developed Internet-based user interfaces to integrate access to all MRP national databases both for browsing the data in a map format and for subsetting the databases for direct download. The coordination activities of the project occur through periodic meetings of the entire project team as well as through smaller, topic-specific meetings.

4. Technology Used

The technology chosen to serve MRP spatial data over the Internet in the browse environment is ESRI's ArcIMS Internet Map Server. ArcIMS allows users to readily and easily display, analyze, and interpret MRP spatial data from their desktop using a Web browser connected to the Internet. The ArcIMS client used by this site has been extensively modified by the USGS for use with MRP data. MRP's data download interface was developed internally by the USGS and uses a MySQL database backend.

5. Future Enhancements

The development and enhancement of the SIDP ArcIMS client is active and ongoing. Currently, the client, which is written primarily in JavaScript, is undergoing additional customization to provide added functionality. In the future additional spatial data sets will be included as they become available.