Description: The BC Geological Survey reviews and maintains collections of mineral and coal technical
assessment reports submitted under the terms of the Mineral Tenure Act, the Coal Act, and the
Regulations under these Acts. ARIS (Assessment Report Indexing System) is the collection of
technical assessment reports and data from mineral exploration and development properties
across British Columbia. Filed by the exploration and mining industry since 1947, assessment
reports document geological, geophysical, geochemical, drilling, and other exploration related
activities. Once approved, assessment reports are kept confidential for one-year from the date
that the exploration and development work was registered. Newly public assessment reports
are made available on a monthly basis.
This layer contains a snapshot of the BC Assessment Report Information System database. The
latest version is at ARIS. Where possible, use the official ARIS database for the latest version.
Description: This layer contains all disposal sites scored according to the critical mineral potential ranking
description in the main report. When the disposal site polygons were present, they were
collapsed to point locations, so that all point locations can be compared.Created in the course of this project
Description: This layer, with data available as both polygons and points, contains spatial and metadata
information on all disposal sites derived in the course of this project, along with references
and citations.
Created in the course of this project
Description: This layer contains data derived from the Federal Contaminated Sites Inventory, filtered to
focus on sites related to mining and mineral exploration activity. In some cases it can help to
corroborate the presence of waste rock and tailings, but not all such features are considered
contaminated sites
Description: The Gazetteer of British Columbia is a spreadsheet of all official place names, including feature
type, feature code, mapsheet, and latitude & longitude. The Gazetteer is extracted from the BC
Geographical Names Information System (BCGNIS), the master database of British Columbia
place names.
Source: BC Gazetteer - Open Government Portal
Description: The minfile_producer_compilation layer described below includes all MINFILE occurrences that
have any indication of actual mining. For some use cases, that is too permissive. This layer is a
more selective version, requiring a MINFILE occurrence to also have been issued a permit
number at some point, or being given a mine name or mine plan number, in a government
database, or having nonzero production volume. Adding these stricter criteria eliminates over
50% of the MINFILEs matched by minfile_producer_compilation. Because of higher selectively
MINFILEs in this layer are more likely to have prospective disposal sites.
Description: This layer contains a subset of the BC MINFILE database, “flattened” to a single table for the
purposes of this project. We convert the MINFILE numbers to “clean MINFILE numbers”, avoiding
the use of spaces inside MINFILE numbers which can be problematic and confusing to users;
for example we express 093L__182 (underscore showing mandatory double spaces) as 093L.182.
Since BC MINFILE is actively maintained by the BC Geological Survey, one should consult the
actual MINFILE database to obtain the most recent information
Description: This layer compiles all MINFILE occurrences that have any indication of producing mined
material or being associated with mining and disposal activity, by joining data from MINFILE,
Open FIle 2003-03 and the Abandoned Mines dataset. MINFILE occurrences that were at
exploration stages not included.
Sources: minfile, openfile_2003, permitted_major_mine
Description: This is a copy of the data from Geoscience BC project 2021-003, “Georeferencing and Data
Capture of 2019-2021 NI 43-101 Reports”, also researched by Purple Rock Inc. The project
compiled spatial linkages from National Instrument 43-101 reports to MINFILEs, and would be
valuable for anyone looking to understand any NI 43-101 Technical Reports associated with a
disposal site
Description: This layer contains a copy of main tabular data that is included in BC Geological Survey Open
File 2003-3, a report containing a historical snapshot of past mining activity. Some of this
information is outdated, but we provide it as a reference as related information. Information in
BC MINFILE and our disposal_site_aggregation layers is more current.
Source: BC Geological Survey Open File 2003-03
Description: This layer contains the locations of current and historical smelters in BC. Most smelters have
extensive disposal sites.
This layer was generated in the course of this project
Description: These layers show mining rights that were granted through the Crown Grants legal framework,
and an effort to correlate MINFILE records to their corresponding Crown Grants. MINFILE does
not directly link to Crown Grants, but contains a description of nearby crown grant lot numbers;
when we found a reasonably close crown grant, we consider them linked. Some MINFILEs
appear to reference grants that are not found in the Crown Grants database; we are not aware
of why that is the case.
We caution that one would need legal advice to determine the actual ownership status and
potential claims associated with any land claim.
Source: Layer: MTA - Crown Granted Mineral Claims (ID: 74), BC Geographic Data Warehouse
Description: This is a copy of the data from Geoscience BC project 2021-003, “Georeferencing and Data
Capture of 2019-2021 NI 43-101 Reports”, also researched by Purple Rock Inc. The project
compiled spatial linkages from National Instrument 43-101 reports to MINFILEs, and would be
valuable for anyone looking to understand any NI 43-101 Technical Reports associated with a
disposal site
Description: This layer shows the network of major transmission lines in BC. Voltage information is not
publicly available; one would need to contact BC Hydro to learn more about what voltages may
be available in a particular location.
Source: BC Hydro Bulk Provincial Transmission System
Description: These layers show mining rights that were granted through the Crown Grants legal framework,
and an effort to correlate MINFILE records to their corresponding Crown Grants. MINFILE does
not directly link to Crown Grants, but contains a description of nearby crown grant lot numbers;
when we found a reasonably close crown grant, we consider them linked. Some MINFILEs
appear to reference grants that are not found in the Crown Grants database; we are not aware
of why that is the case.
We caution that one would need legal advice to determine the actual ownership status and
potential claims associated with any land claim.
Source: Layer: MTA - Crown Granted Mineral Claims (ID: 74), BC Geographic Data Warehouse
Description: This layer, with data available as both polygons and points, contains spatial and metadata
information on all disposal sites derived in the course of this project, along with references
and citations.
Created in the course of this project.
Description: This layer is a copy of the BC Major Mines permit database, showing all recent permitted active
and reclaimed major mines in BC. Smaller mines and older historical mines are not provided in
this layer. The permit area shows the total area in which all mining and related activities may
be performed, not just active mining sites.
Source: BC Major MInes