Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS)

MRDS is a collection of reports describing metallic and nonmetallic mineral resources throughout the world. Included are deposit name, location, commodity, deposit description, geologic characteristics, production, reserves, resources, and references. It subsumes the original MRDS and MAS/MILS.

MRDS is large and complex. This service provides a subset of the database comprised of those data fields deemed most useful and which most frequently contain some information, but full reports of most records are available as well.

View:

Show in a web browser window:


Continental US	Global

Show in Google Earth or download KML:

(Instructions and advice)

Show in your GIS using OGC WMS:

http://mrdata.usgs.gov/services/mrds?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS&version=1.1.1

Download:

Download data for geographic areas you choose

Search by site name, location, or commodity

Notes on using MRDS within ArcGIS

Options for downloading the entire data set depend on what software you want to use:

Spreadsheet: mrds-csv.zip: Comma-separated values, 23 MB expands to 125 MB

All records, 44 best data fields, multiple values within a field separated by semicolon
Geographic information system: mrds.zip: Shapefile, 40 MB expands to 1.1 GB

All records, 44 best data fields, multiple values within a field separated by semicolon, long text fields truncated at 254 characters

mrds-us.zip: Shapefile, 34 MB expands to 932 MB

US records only, 44 best data fields, multiple values within a field separated by semicolon, long text fields truncated at 254 characters

mrds-gdb.zip: File geodatabase, 39 MB expands to 250 MB

All records; location, site names, commodities, minerals; separate tables

mrds-mdb.zip: Personal geodatabase (.mdb), 67 MB expands to 293 MB

All records; location, site names, commodities, minerals; separate tables
Relational database: rdbms-tab.zip: Tab-delimited tables, 20 MB expands to 90 MB

All records; location, site names, commodities, minerals; separate tables

rdbms-tab-all.zip: Tab-delimited tables, 118 MB expands to 804 MB

All records; all tables; separate tables

Documentation:

Metadata:

[Outline] - [Questions & Answers] - [Plain text]

About the database fields

Best 44 fields: Most commonly requested and best populated. Provided by default through the data selection and download interfaces above
Compact geodatabase fields: Provided in the File geodatabase and personal geodatabase downloads
Comprehensive fields: Provided only through the comprehensive relational database download package rdbms-tab-all.zip

Mineral Resources Eastern Central Western Alaska Minerals Information
Spatial Data Crustal Geophysics and Geochemistry Other Mineral Related Links