Regina – While the geology side of the Saskatchewan Geological Survey has received a lot of press from this paper over the years, there’s a portion of the survey that hasn’t, the data management section. That’s headed by Ryan Morelli, assistant chief geologist, data management.
“Our group administers all the spatial data that the geologists collect in the other two branches of the survey. All of the bedrock mapping data, and all the petroleum geology data comes through us. We manage it and distribute it to the public,” he said on June 7.
“It can be just about any data they produce. There are a couple channels the various data goes through. Some goes into IRIS. The information that goes into IRIS, we don’t handle specifically. But (we handle) a lot of the data collected in the field, whether it be structural measurements or analytical data derived from samples collected,” he said. IRIS stands for Integrated Resource Information System.
He went on, “A lot of it is Precambrian rocks, so most of the information on the different formation picks and so on is already handled through a different process, through IRIS, but supporting analytical data, if there’s supporting analytical data – if there’s geochemical analysis of fluids, brines, formation water – that’s published through the GeoAtlas. The GeoAtlas is our online platform for distributing all the geoscience data, that also has some components of some of the regulatory information from petroleum geology. Well logs, anything like that, is available through GeoAtlas. Our mineral tenure group, all the various dispositions, and mineral tenure information is published through GeoAtlas.”
The GeoAtlas can be found at gisappl.saskatchewan.ca/GeoAtlas/. It recently saw a substantial update.
Morelli, a geologist, has eight people working in his group. Four are geographic information system (GIS) analysts and two geologists review mineral assessment information submitted by industry. They have one geophysicist and another person working out of La Ronge working in an administrative capacity.
