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).

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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

For more information, please contact the Targeted Geoscience Initiative Coordination Office at: tgi-igc@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca

Geological Survey of Canada
Natural Resources Canada
601 Booth Street
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0E8