NATMAP - Canada's National Geoscience Mapping Program: 1991-2002

The National Geoscience Mapping Program (NATMAP) was launched by the Geological Survey of Canada in 1991 in response to a concern of the country's mineral exploration community that the level of geological mapping by Canada's federal and provincial/territorial surveys was no longer adequate to assist companies in new exploration ventures into more remote or poorly understood regions. The principles and practices of the NATMAP Program were developed in GSC-led deliberations with its counterpart surveys and industry representatives. For the first time, major geological mapping projects would be formally coordinated and collaborated studies by the public geosciences agencies, utilizing their resident and relevant expertise and funds to produce a new era of geological maps incorporating data from several geosciences disciplines and in digital formats. The thirteen NATMAP projects undertaken over the Program's thirteen-year span were proposed, reviewed, funded and renewed by management and advisory panels according to a series of criteria for project suitability and operations - a process that has since become the standard for GSC project management. The success of NATMAP undoubtedly lies in the important advances in Canada's geosciences database and integrated knowledge. The scientific results of the individual NATMAP projects, covering one million km2 across nine provinces and three territories, have been published and communicated elsewhere in well over 500 maps and 1500 reports. This compilation provides information for each project's rationale, component studies and methodologies, some high-level findings and their implications, plus impacts attributable to acceptance of the results by the resource exploration and public policy sectors, perhaps a decade or more later. In general terms, NATMAP accomplished its original goal of providing the new geoscience required by the private sector to refine its exploration strategies in areas of previous interest and to advance with some confidence into regions that were formerly considered too uncertain because of the poor quality of the extant geological knowledge. Virtually all of the projects targeted at this industry have seen new claims, staking and detailed surveys and exploration over the newly mapped terranes. In some instances, follow up of geophysical or geochemical anomalies identified during the NATMAP investigations have led to the discovery of potential economic deposits. NATMAP projects over portions of sedimentary basins in western and eastern Canada helped define the 3-dimensional extent of suitable lithologies and structures for oil and gas deposits have seen the immediate drilling of significant numbers of exploratory wells. This latter activity, plus the mineral exploration ventures, have already contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the Canadian economy. Important results were also achieved in the NATMAP projects that addressed issues of groundwater source recognition and protection, terrain stability and aggregate resource potential, contributing to new, related public policy debates and regulations. It is unlikely that the total contribution of the NATMAP geosciences, in terms of providing the knowledge upon which future resource discoveries will be made, will be compiled or calculated. Nonetheless, the role played by Canada's geological surveys in NATMAP and its successor projects and programs, will continue to support a broad spectrum of issues for which geoscience knowledge is fundamental.

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