Introduction to ArcGIS Desktop for Mining Geoscience

This course teaches how ArcGIS Desktop software can be used to accomplish mining geoscience workflows. While working with real-world geologic, geochemical, and geophysical data, students complete hands-on exercises that mimic the day-to-day tasks of a geoscientist using GIS technology. The course emphasizes practical ArcGIS skills that can be directly applied to solve mining geoscience problems.

This course is designed for mining geoscientists who want to learn how to use ArcGIS Desktop software to perform GIS operations and analysis.

Those who complete this course will be able to

• Understand how GIS is used for geoscience applications.
• Display and symbolize geoscience data layers in ArcMap.
• Create presentation-quality geologic maps and graphs.
• Use ArcMap editing tools to create new features and assign feature attributes.
• Generate and view statistics for geoscience data.
• Use ArcGIS analysis tools to detect mineral occurrence patterns and identify optimal areas for mineral exploration.
• Understand the structure of a geodatabase and its advantages for storing geoscience data.
• Create a geodatabase to store geologic, geochemical, geophysical, and raster data.
• Georeference, transform, and project raster data.
• Create a model that automates geoprocessing tasks used to locate prospective deposits.
• Create metadata to document a geology dataset.

• Working with geologic, structural, and geophysical data in ArcGIS: Adding data, Exploring data; Querying data.
• Symbolizing geoscience data: Symbolizing geology, faults, foldaxes, and structural measurements; Visualizing geochemical data using graduated color and graduated symbol legends.
• Creating a geology map for plotting: Creating a layout; Exporting a layout to a PDF file and an image file.
• Georeferencing images: Using a shapefile of latitude and longitude coordinates with a scanned map; Adding control points; Transforming scanned map pixels to map units; Aligning an image with a shapefile of known latitude and longitude coordinates.
• Working with projections: Defining a coordinate system for a shapefile; Assigning a coordinate system to a CAD file; Defining a custom coordinate system; Reprojecting a NAD27 dataset to NAD83.
• Building a geodatabase: Importing data; Creating feature datasets, feature classes, and attribute domains.
• Digitizing and editing in ArcMap: Creating line, polygon, and island polygon features; Moving vertices; Assigning feature attributes.
• Finding anomalous geochemical samples: Generating statistics for mineral values in a soil dataset to calculate anomalous thresholds; Using a classification histogram to find anomalous values; Using chart symbols to display mineral values associated with individual point features; Graphing anomalous geochemical samples.
• Working with ArcGIS analysis tools: Proximity analysis using buffers; Overlay analysis using intersect; Exploring the spatial relationship between mineral occurrences and structure; Defining gold targets using spatial analysis.
• Spatial analysis using ModelBuilder: Creating a new model; Adding geoprocessing tools to a model; Defining model parameters; Generating a report of the model results.
• Viewing and creating metadata in ArcCatalog: Introducing the FGDC metadata standard; Metadata stylesheets; Editing metadata.

Students should have a thorough understanding of mining terminology and business processes and a basic understanding of GIS concepts. Completion of ArcGIS Desktop I: Getting Started with ArcGIS or Getting Started with GIS is recommended. Geoscientists working in the mining industry will find the course of particular benefit.

This course is designed to work with the following software:

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