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MAS/MILS Arc/Info point coverage for the western U.S. (excluding Hawaii)

January 1, 1998

The U.S. Geological Survey has two international and one regional digital database that contains information on mineral properties. This report describes the conversion of selected data from one of the international databases - MAS/MILS (Mineral Availability System/Mineral Industry Location System) - into a spatial data product. The MAS/MILS database, obtained from the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) upon its closure, contains over 221,000 records of mineral properties and processing facilities throughout the world. However, the majority of the records in the database are of sites located in the western U.S. This is due to the extensive mineral activity that has occurred in the West, and the work done by mineral professionals in the Western, Alaska, and Intermountain Field Operations Centers of the USBM.


The purpose of this project was to create a spatial coverage of the western U.S. containing mineral resource information. This coverage includes information for the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. For this report, locations from MAS/MILS were converted to a point coverage using a geographic information system (GIS). All work was done using Arc/Info v. 7.0.4. There are 128,441 points in the coverage.

Publication Year 1998
Title MAS/MILS Arc/Info point coverage for the western U.S. (excluding Hawaii)
DOI 10.3133/ofr98512
Authors J. Douglas Causey
Publication Type Report
Publication Subtype USGS Numbered Series
Series Title Open-File Report
Series Number 98-512
Index ID ofr98512
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center
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