Improving mineral exploration: Targeted Geoscience Initiative

If you’re from the mineral exploration industry, our Targeted Geoscience Initiative’s (TGI’s) publicly available geoscience knowledge and data may help inform your exploration activities. Discoveries of near-surface, extractable metals are decreasing in Canada and that’s part of the reason why the program was established in 2000 as a national, collaborative program. Led by the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), our data and knowledge support industry, academics and provincial and territorial governments working to detect buried mineral deposits. We also offer grants to support research that complements our studies.

We recently also launched a new initiative that specifically focuses on critical minerals, under the Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy. For information on this work, please visit our Critical Minerals Geoscience and Data Initiative webpage.

Program objectives

Featured research and data

Our knowledge products can help you understand ore systems. They’re particularly useful if you’re engaged in your own research into sustainable exploration for critical and economically important minerals in Canada.

TGI booklet
This booklet details how we’ve helped industry target deeply buried mineral deposits more effectively with new knowledge and techniques.

Targeted Geoscience Initiative 5: volcanic- and sediment-hosted massive-sulfide deposit genesis and exploration methods
This publication presents advanced genetic and exploration models for volcanic- and sedimentary-hosted base-metal deposits, together with new laboratory, geophysical, and field techniques.

Targeted Geoscience Initiative 5: contributions to the understanding and exploration of porphyry deposits
This publication summarizes the results of five-year research projects conducted on porphyry deposits in the Canadian Cordillera and the Appalachians of Atlantic Canada. The main objective of these projects was to better define the geological conditions where porphyry deposits form and test techniques to detect buried porphyry deposits in support of mineral exploration.

Targeted Geoscience Initiative 5: Contributions to the understanding of Canadian gold systems
This set of 20 papers contains information that supports the discovery of gold and associated critical mineral exploration in a wider range of geological settings than previously offered.

Targeted Geoscience Initiative 5: Advances in the understanding of Canadian Ni-Cu-PGE and Cr ore systems — Examples from the Midcontinent Rift, the Circum-Superior Belt, the Archean Superior Province, and Cordilleran Alaskan-type intrusions
These nine papers provide research on the geological settings of magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE and Cr ore deposits and the underlying mineral systems. They form the backbone of established and emerging mining camps across Canada.

Targeted Geoscience Initiative 5: Integrated multidisciplinary studies of unconformity-related uranium deposits from the Patterson Lake corridor, northern Saskatchewan
This document summarizes the results of the five-year study on the Patterson Lake corridor, which has high-grade uranium deposits that differ from the traditional Athabasca Basin depositional models. The results of the study support classification of the hydrothermal deposits as related to the role of unconformable granitic intrusions.

Datasets to support prospectivity modelling for sediment-hosted Zn-Pb mineral systems
This study was completed as part of the Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative (CMMI) between the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and Geoscience Australia (GA). It reports data from all three countries to support mineral exploration for critical raw materials in sedimentary basins.

Looking for more great resources from TGI and other GSC programs? Search the Open S&T Repository (OSTR), a database of more than 85,000 scientific publications from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).

BROWSE OSTR

TGI’s accomplishments to date

Our program’s scientific knowledge and innovative methods have helped reduce the risks inherent in mineral exploration, so companies can focus on areas where they’re likely to be successful. Here are some of our recent achievements:

• Our public geoscience knowledge enhanced the search criteria used to find new deposits in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut. That enabled the expansion of its mining district and improved the exploration models used to look for banded iron formation–hosted gold deposits around the globe.
• Our work has also led to a new model for chromite deposition in the Ring of Fire area of northern Ontario. It provides valuable geological information that informs mineral exploration in one of the largest undeveloped ore-rich regions in the world.
• TGI studies on the formation of polymetallic base and critical metal deposits in northwestern Canada, and carbonate-hosted zinc-lead deposits in western Canada, have also provided key geological knowledge that guides exploration in these areas.
• Our analyses of the chemical composition of particular minerals that can indicate the presence of nearby porphyry mineralization are helping industry better target economic mineralization in British Columbia.
• TGI’s 3D geophysical modelling in the Patterson Lake corridor of northern Saskatchewan has enhanced the understanding of Canada’s uranium resources. Our studies have found links between the uranium deposits and deep crustal-scale features, including the influence of circa 1.8 Ga granitic intrusions on the uranium ore systems.

We’ve collaborated with industry, academia and provincial and territorial governments to generate more than 1,000 public geoscience knowledge publications and 500 science presentations for the public and stakeholders over the past decade. TGI has provided training for more than 150 students and offered 48 grants to Canadian academic institutions. We’ll continue producing highly relevant geoscience to support research and the mining industry in the coming years.

TGI grant program

Program Details

The TGI grants program provides funding to develop next generation of geoscience knowledge, innovative techniques and predictive models for more effective targeting of buried mineral deposits.

Amount available: up to $100,000 CAD per fiscal year
Type of funding: grants
Application deadline: 11:59 p.m PST on September 13, 2024
Project timeframe: April 1, 2025 – March 31, 2027

Eligibility

TGI grant recipients can include:

• Canadian and International not-for-profit organizations (including industry, research, and professional associations)
• Canadian and international academic institutions
• Indigenous organizations, groups or communities
• Provincial, territorial, regional, and municipal governments, and their departments and agencies

TGI program objectives

• Generate geoscience knowledge to enhance the understanding of the processes that formed Canada’s critical and economically important mineral deposits and identify or develop novel indicators and parameters to guide exploration in emerging and existing mining areas.
• Improve mineral exploration effectiveness by developing next-generation geological knowledge, leading edge tools, innovative techniques, and predictive models of Canada’s mineral potential for key commodities, including critical minerals.

Expected TGI program outcomes

• The development of new knowledge, methodologies and innovative models that enhance exploration industry’s ability to detect buried ore deposits.
• The development of integrated, multi-scale scientific knowledge of source-to-ore formation that guides new exploration approaches.
• An increased pool of highly qualified personnel that is available for employment in the mineral exploration industry.
• Dissemination of geoscience knowledge and methodologies relevant to the detection and delineation of new mineral resources.
• Collaborative geoscience research groups that leverage expertise and capacity to effectively solve research questions of pertinence to the exploration industry.

How to Apply

Step 1: Request a project proposal package from the TGI Coordination Office at: tgi-igc@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca.

Step 2: Email or mail your completed TGI Grant Program Project Proposal Template and TGI Grant Program Proposed Budget Template to the TGI Coordination Office. The receipt of each submission will be acknowledged via email.

Mailing address:
Targeted Geoscience Initiative Coordination Office
Geological Survey of Canada
Natural Resources Canada
601 Booth Street, Room 255
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0E8

Review procedures and assessment criteria

All submissions that include both: 1) a completed and signed TGI Grant Program Project Proposal Template and 2) a completed TGI Grant Program Proposed Budget Template will be evaluated by scientific experts and senior program managers. After a weighted assessment (see table below), TGI management will determine the successful proposals and decide whether the work is best done under the auspices of a renewable single-year grant agreement or a two-year grant agreement. There will be no appeal process. Only applicants successful at this stage will be invited to negotiate the terms and conditions of a subsequent grant agreement.

Project proposal assessment criteria

Weighting	Category	Considerations
30%	Alignment with TGI	Does the submission clearly demonstrate how the proposed project would support TGI’s program objectives, expected outcomes and scientific gaps?
40%	Scientific merit, workplan and budget	Is the proposed project scientifically sound and technically feasible? Is the work plan reasonable and effectively costed?
10%	Research competence	Together, do the applicant and the research team have the expertise required to achieve their objectives competently and complete the project successfully?
10%	Collaborations, partnerships and leveraging	Are there other collaborators or partners involved in the project? If so, what is their level of commitment and which elements of the project are they funding?
10%	Training of highly qualified personnel	Does the submission indicate how the knowledge and experience gained by involved students, post-doctoral fellows, research assistants or others (including industrial personnel) will develop the next generation of highly skilled geoscientists who might be employed by the Canadian minerals industry, research institutes or universities?

Reporting requirements

Regular communication between NRCan and the Recipients will be established to monitor progress. Proponents will be asked to provide semi-annual progress reports for the purposes of determining program performance and assist in evaluation of the program.

Eligible expenditures

Eligible Expenditures must be directly related to the approved projects and may include:

• salaries and benefits;
• professional, scientific, and contracting services;
• travel expenditures, including meals and accommodation, based on National Joint Council Rates. For academic institutions, travel expenditures may be in accordance with their established policies and directives;
• laboratory and field supplies, and materials, including transportation rentals and leases;
• field-related services and equipment rental;
• License fees and permits;
• facility rentals and appropriate expenses related to the staging of stakeholder engagement seminars, conferences, workshops, etc.;
• communications materials, including: translation, printing and binding promotion of workshops and publication of project reports;
• data collection services, including processing, analysis and management; office operating and maintenance expenditures that directly support the project, (e.g., materials, supplies and equipment including computer software and computer support services);
• Overhead expenditures^{Footnote 1}, provided they are directly related to the conduct of the project and can be attributed to it. Overhead expenditures are not to exceed 15% of total eligible project costs; and
• Goods and Services Tax, Provincial Sales Tax, and Harmonized Sales Tax, net of any tax rebate to which the Recipient is entitled.^{Footnote 2}

Ineligible Expenditures

• The purchase of land or payment of property taxes;
• Major capital (such as laboratory instrumentation or IM/IT hardware valued over $10,000); and
• Ongoing fees beyond the duration of the project (e.g., maintenance fees, service contracts).