About Course

The purpose of this course is to identify how to research commodities. What is mined? What is the relevant information that describes a given mining operation? Canada is used as a case example as it highlights the variety of ways that commodities are extracted. A high level overview is provided of commodities mined in Canada between 2000 and 2015, with a particular focus on presenting techniques that can be used to find additional information about the production of commodities. The research is all described in the context of Canada but this same research process could be repeated for any country or district.

• With exploration strategies. If Canada was in need of a certain commodity, where could this be found based on historical deposits that were mineable?
• Infrastructure needs of the country, such as roadways, railways and power lines. How do the resource locations match to where the people live? This will affect the recruitment of personnel to work at the operations.
• What is the climate, elevation, road access, and other physical characteristics of the mine location?

• Safety concerns to the public and wildlife as it is important that past mine openings have been sealed.
• Show where past tailings piles may exist, to ensure that proper treatment is in place to protect surface and groundwater from contamination.
• Show indirectly how technology has affects the types of natural resources being mined.

• Canada has a mature mining industry.
• There are an abundance of information sources including the journals, Government, company websites, and mining associations yet our database still lacks information.
• Mining has changed. Are we still finding surface deposits for certain commodities? How deep are we mining? As technology such as green energy has evolved, can this effect be quantified such as through seeing the disappearance of coal mines?
• There is value in learning how to use spatial plotting tools based on GIS coordinates, so that segregated data types can be brought together and viewed in different ways.
• The list of commodities is extensive. How do other countries compare?