Many elements go into creating a top mining jurisdiction, and the presence of precompetitive data gets less attention than it should as a draw for explorers.

Last week, Nevada Bureau of Mines' director Dr Simon Jowitt and University of Nevada's Travis D. Fisher published the state's first assessment of industry perspectives for precompetitive data — the publicly available maps, surveys, trends and so on that describe a region, in general.

The survey of exploration professionals sheds new light on an underappreciated part of the mining sector's infrastructure.

"Nobody's actually asked the people who are using the data what data they want," Jowitt told Mining Magazine.

Jowitt and Fisher gathered responses from 77 participants in the mining exploration sector about the condition of precompetitive data in the Silver State. The results indicated some clear priorities for mineral explorers.

Respondents identified geologic mapping as the most important type of precompetitive data required, followed by geochemical and geophysical data. The survey found "mixed" ratings for legacy samples, remote sensing, lithogeochemical, and geochronological data.

Jowitt and Fisher interpreted this result as showing that "most respondents consider publicly available maps as fundamental for efficient exploration for a variety of commodity types."

The quality and breadth of data were important, too. They wanted to see "multiple regional-scale datasets, the use of modern detection or analytical techniques, and the applicability of higher-resolution datasets to exploration targeting."

Junior grumbles

While the US government under President Donald Trump has bought into some major domestic mines, the exploration sector — the foundation of the mineral development lifecycle — has continued to be largely ignored.

Jowitt told Mining Magazine that junior explorers had told him at a recent conference "nothing has really changed on the permitting side," despite the pro-mining rhetoric from the administration.

Trump's high-profile state capitalism, best shown by the Department of War taking a large shareholding in MP Materials, lies uneasily beside the ‘pro-business' right-libertarian ethos driving the US Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) decisions. This restless bed might end up inhibiting the development of the US mining sector.

"The fact is, a lot of people who are involved on the permitting side, on federal land [such as] for the Bureau of Land Management, have been removed as a result of ‘increases in efficiency'. So we don't have the people to actually do the permitting work right now to help permitting go quicker," Jowitt said.

Earth MRI on life support

The industry may soon have to reckon with the consequences of cuts to crucial programmes run by the US Geological Survey (USGS).

"The other thing that's restricting exploration here is a lack of precompetitive data, publicly available geoscientific data. We're moving to remedy that through the USGS Earth MRI (mapping resources initiative), but that's falling off a fiscal cliff in two years, when it's going to go from US$71 or $72 million a year back to $10 or $11 million a year for the entire country," Jowitt warned.

President Trump cut the USGS for 2026 by 39% to $891.6 million, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Earth MRI has, through USGS acquisitions, built a trove of high-resolution geophysical, geological, hyperspectral and LiDAR data. Jowitt and Fisher's study found that, despite the high-profile collection, "dissemination and knowledge of the availability of these data" needed improvement.

Even though Earth MRI has been a great leap forward for US precompetitive data, Nevada and the US have a long way to go to catch up with the leading mining jurisdictions: "We're already 20 years behind Australia and Canada [in terms of precompetitive data]," he said.

The possibility of looming cuts to Earth MRI troubles Jowitt.

"It's just going to set everything back, because we just don't have the data here to de-risk exploration in a huge part of the state, in a huge part of the country," he said.

The lesson from the rest of the world is that investing in publicly available geological data "will certainly produce significant returns on investment," Jowitt and Fisher concluded.

'Huge amount of opportunity'

The contradictions of cuts aside, Jowitt said that the present moment also held "a huge amount of opportunity" to improve mineral exploration efficiency and discovery rates in Nevada and across the US.

"I would say that we're actually underexplored for a huge variety of commodities. We have lots of copper potential, lots of nickel, lots of zinc/lead potential, lots of silver potential, lots of gold potential, obviously," he said.

For Jowitt, gathering, generating and releasing precompetitive data is a surefire way to unlock that mineral wealth.

"Precompetitive data acquisitions are a proven way to do that with great returns of investment, but there doesn't seem to be much talk about that. That's annoying to me, because it's just obvious in terms of what we should do if we want to discover more mineral deposits to form the foundation of all these supply chains we're talking about for national and economic security," he said.

Jowitt and Fisher's study showed straightforward evidence of enthusiasm for more precompetitive data among Nevada's explorers, as well as interesting recommendations from those working on the ground.

Some respondents showed "a preference for high-resolution airborne methods over satellite coverage", or viewed "hyperspectral longwave infrared (LWIR) as more useful than visible to shortwave infrared (VSWIR)", or specified the most useful flight line spacing for airborne gravity methods.

When asked what precompetitive data mattered to them, the explorers delivered.

Simple fixes

The survey suggested that some simple fixes to the system would go a long way.

Jowitt, a UK-born economic geologist who has also worked in Australia, suggested that more could be done from the federal or state level to encourage juniors, such as co-funded drilling ("like they do in Western Australia"), co-funded geophysics, and improved access to legacy samples and data.

While Nevada requires that all core and cuttings from oil and gas and geothermal drilling be preserved, the same does not hold for mineral deposit drilling.

"The only way we get cores of samples from mineral exploration is if people donate them to us. There's a whole load of information that's essentially been lost out there that could be preserved far better."

This would require investment in state or federal mineral core storage too, as in Australia where each province has its own core store with hyperspectral core imaging facilities, with data available online.

Respondents to the survey said access to historic data was "highly valuable for advancing exploration at a target- or project-level."

Respondents to Jowitt and Fisher's survey suggested fixes, such as making data generated on public or federal lands publicly available after a given confidentiality period, as is the case in Australia and Canada.

"There are multiple avenues where I think we can learn from the best globally and apply that here, but we need to have more people thinking about the importance of these data, these legacy samples and historic information," Jowitt said.