Significant Progress

Way Forward Commitment:

Our Government will assess and promote new areas of mineral resources to stimulate increased activity in the mining sector. This will include increasing exploration and development through targeted promotional activities and development of a core digitization process (electronic format) to allow broader sharing of the province’s core sample information to companies worldwide. We will also complete an assessment of mineral exploration potential based on regional and economic development considerations to identify priority areas for resource data collection and promotion. In 2017-18, the core digitization process will be initiated and priority resource assessments will be undertaken.

What We’ve Accomplished:

• The Provincial Government continues to work toward increasing the amount of photography of bedrock core that is available.
• The core storage program is also acquiring photo-manipulation software to enhance the quality and consistency of the photography in terms of its effectiveness as reference information for mineral exploration work; other methods are also being explored to generate photographic data.
• The Department of Natural Resources has consulted with the members of the Office of Applied Research at College of the North Atlantic, and has provided access to the core storage facilities, as development and testing of digital core photography automation processes for use in mineral exploration continue. College of the North Atlantic, in partnership with Memorial University, have completed an ACOA Atlantic Innovation Fund proposal to develop a Hyperspectral Scanning Unit (HSU) to support mineral exploration, drill core digitization and ore processing optimization. Budget 2019 outlined provincial support for this HSU.
• The next step is to develop a plan to allow direct access to the core storage database via the Geoscience Atlas.