The question
A junior company holding gold concessions in the Argentine Puna was preparing a field season. Before committing a crew, it wanted to know what the public record already said about its ground and its neighbours, and where new samples would add the most.
The data available
- National geological survey airborne geophysics: magnetic and radiometric grids.
- Published geological and geomorphological mapping, and drainage basins.
- Public stream-sediment geochemistry within 20 km of the project.
- The mining cadastre: neighbouring titles by holder and status.
- The company's own concession outlines and field notes.
None of it was in one place, one format or one datum.
What was done
- Every layer was georeferenced to a single datum and checked against terrain.
- The layers were assembled into one interactive map that opens in a browser, with each layer switched on and off and its legend beside it.
- Stream-sediment values were read against the basin each sample drains, not as points, because a stream sample describes the ground upstream of it.
- Planned sampling points were placed where the layers disagreed or where no sample existed, and exported for handheld GPS.
The result
The company's geologists, management and field crew worked from the same map, on a laptop in the office and on a phone in the field, with nothing to install. The next phase of sampling was planned on it, and the points went straight into the crew's GPS units.
What it cannot say
A compilation of public data shows where to look, not what is there. Regional surveys were flown and sampled at a spacing meant for districts, not for single concessions, and the map marks areas with no data as blank rather than as low.