Geoscience Data Repositories in MINNESOTA

Minerals Division Core Library

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
1525 East Third Avenue
Hibbing, MN 55746

Contact: Richard W. Ruhanen, Supervisor, Information Services
218/262-7348
218/262-7328 (FAX)
rick.ruhanen@dnr.state.mn.us 

Data Center Staff Size: 3
Type of Repository: Public - State/Local
Data Access Fee: no usage fees; there is a charge per photocopy.
Catalog and Index Type: paper, digital, fiche
Data Delivery Media: paper, mail out, diskette

Quantity of Holdings:

Center Services Provided: core/sample services, data packages

Geographic Areas of Holdings, by type and media:

Comments: The Library currently contains 9,500 drill cores and cuttings, all from Minnesota. About half of these are from base- and precious-metal exploration, largely from Archean greenstone and proterozoic mafic terranes.

Customers mays use the library free of charge, except for photocopying records. Sampling of cores and cuttings is allowed under strict guidelines.

Projects are underway to produce digital data sets and ARC/INFO GIS coverage for distribution via CD-ROM and internet; none are completed at this time.

A digital index exists for the drill cores and related data files.
 

Water Well Information Unit

Minnesota Geological Survey
2642 University Avenue West
St. Paul, MN 55114-1057

Contact: Tim Wahl, Programmer/Analyst
612/627-4780
612/627-4778 (FAX)
mgs@gold.tc.umn.edu 
http://geolab.geo.umn.edu/mgs/ 

Data Center Staff Size: 4
Type of Repository: Public - State/Local
Data Access Fee: other
Catalog and Index Type: paper, digital
Data Retrieval: on-line, off-line
Data Delivery Media: mail out of diskettes, faxing of photocopies, anonymous ftp site

Quantity of Holdings:

Center Services Provided: interpretation

Geographic Areas of Holdings, by type and media:

Comments: The Minnesota Geological Survey maintains a variety of databases related to the geology of Minnesota. These data are relevant to the ground-water and mineral-exploration industries primarily; because Minnesota has no petroleum resources, the data have very little applicability to the petroleum industry. County Well Index is a PC-based system for the storage, retrieval, and editing of water-well information. For most of the wells in the system, geologic and well-construction data are available, and water-chemistry data are included for many wells. There are currently 240,000 wells in the database. The CWI manual and one disk are sold for $11, and each additional disk (usually one county per disk) is $5. Some 3,000 downhole geophysical logs have also been collected in a paper file. The Survey also has a large base of aeromagnetic and gravity data. The aeromagnetic data are distributed on CD by NOAA. Geologic mapping at the Survey is now produced digitally. These digital maps are being added to an anonymous ftp site on our Web page. Older geologic mapping is distributed through the map sales office (612/627-4782).