Mineral Inventory describes the extent and volume of the reserve contained within a mineral deposit described by its referenced MINFILE_File record. MINFILE contains geological, location and economic information on 15,142 metallic, industrial mineral and coal occurrences in British Columbia. The database is used by government, industry and academia for resource management, land-use planning, exploration and research.
The Inventory 'Reserve' category is used only for an inventory in an operating mine or a mine near production. Ore reserves are reported as Proven, Probable and Possible. The Resource category is used for all other inventories. Resources are reported as Measured, Indicated and Inferred. A combination of categories is reported as Combined. If the category is not known then Unclassified is used. Sample data can be entered using the Assay/Analysis category. The reserves/resources are reported in tonnes with the grade of commodities.
In general, the inventory is identified by occurrence, zone name and year. There may be an unlimited number of ore zones per occurrence. In addition, each zone name may have inventory for each category. Each ore zone can have a maximum of two inventory calculations per year, per category (e.g., Calculation A & B). This allows for changes in calculations due to grade-tonnage relationships; calculation A may be high-grade low tonnage while calculation B may reflect a low-grade tonnage. Generally, only data for the most recent year is maintained in the database. Only one calculation may be used per ore zone in the ASSAY/ANALYSIS category. The ASSAY/ANALYSIS data cannot coexist with reserves information for any given ore zone name.