A GIS is where an exploration project lives before there is a drill hole: maps, samples, geophysics, satellite images and licence boundaries in one place. We walk through the QGIS workflows and plugins geologists actually use, what Esri’s geologic mapping template and the USGS GeMS schema offer ArcGIS users, and how to plan a sampling grid from the map.
Tools QGIS · ArcGIS Pro
Markets USA · East Africa · MENA
Approach Official docs and standards
QGIS for geologists has gone from a budget alternative to the default desktop GIS on many exploration projects. It is free, it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and its plugins now handle drill holes, cross-sections, structural data and satellite classification. ArcGIS still dominates in many companies and government surveys, and for some jobs it is the better tool. Knowing which to use, and how, saves weeks on a new project.
Try it: Soil and rock-chip sampling grid planner →
This guide covers the GIS workflows that matter in mineral exploration: setting up a project, compiling geology, handling drill holes and geochemistry, using satellite data, and producing standard geologic maps. For each we name the specific QGIS plugins or Esri tools involved, from their official pages. We have no commercial relationship with Esri or any QGIS plugin author.
“The FGDC geologic map standard defines about 3,000 symbols; Esri built more than 1,000 of them for ArcGIS.”
Every sample, map contact, geophysical line and licence corner should end up in one coordinate system in one GIS project. When a new geologist joins, or an investor asks why a target was dropped, the answer should be on the map.
GIS in mineral exploration: what it is used for
GIS in mineral exploration does four jobs. It compiles existing information: government geology maps, historical workings, old drill holes and geophysical surveys. It holds new field data as it arrives. It supports analysis, from simple buffers around faults to weighted prospectivity models. And it produces the maps that go into reports, licence applications and investor presentations.
- ✔ Compilation: georeferencing scanned maps, digitising contacts and faults, importing survey grids.
- ✔ Field data: outcrop observations, structural readings, rock-chip, soil and stream-sediment samples.
- Analysis: gridding geochemistry, overlaying alteration maps on structure, ranking targets.
- Mineral mapping using GIS: classifying satellite imagery into alteration or lithology classes, then checking them in the field.
- Communication: figures for technical reports, regulators and landholders.
That compilation stage overlaps heavily with field mapping. Our geological mapping guide covers the scales and methods that produce data worth putting in the GIS.
QGIS for geologists: setup and core workflows
According to the QGIS project, QGIS is licensed under the GNU GPLv2+ and is free and open-source software, available on Windows, Mac and Linux, and an OSGeo project. For a junior explorer or a consultant working across several clients, the licence alone makes it attractive. The practical question is whether it covers the geology workflows, and in most cases it does.
The best starting reference on QGIS for geologists is QGIS in Mineral Exploration, an online manual that grew out of several years of teaching QGIS to geoscientists in Australia. It covers geological data, drill hole traces, geochemistry, geophysical grids, ASTER, Landsat and Sentinel-2 processing, 3D views and map layouts. Much of what follows reflects the workflows it documents.
1. Pick one projected coordinate system
Choose a projected system (usually the local UTM zone) for the whole project and set it before loading anything. Mixed datums are a common reason a sample plots hundreds of metres from where it was taken. In QGIS, set the project CRS and check each layer’s CRS on import rather than trusting on-the-fly reprojection.
2. Use GeoPackage for your own data
Keep field data in a single GeoPackage per project rather than dozens of shapefiles. One file holds points, lines, polygons and tables, with no field-name length limit. It also keeps sample tables and their locations together, which makes QA easier.
3. Georeference the old maps
Historical maps and reports are often the best information on a licence. QGIS’s georeferencer lets you tie a scanned map to known coordinates, then digitise contacts, faults and old workings on top of it. Record the control points and residual error, because a poorly fitted historical map can shift a target.
When you digitise old maps, put doubtful features in a separate layer with a note on why. Six months later, nobody remembers which fault came from a 1970s sketch and which from your own mapping.
4. Symbolise geology to a standard
Geologic symbols are hard to draw well. The open geologic-symbols project provides symbols for QGIS (and ArcMap) based on the FGDC Digital Cartographic Standard for Geologic Map Symbolization and British Geological Survey specifications, under a CC BY 3.0 licence. Using a standard set makes maps readable to any geologist and saves hours of manual styling.
QGIS geology plugins for drill holes, geochemistry and 3D
Plugins are where QGIS for geologists becomes a real exploration tool. A few do most of the heavy lifting, and all of them are installed from the plugin manager inside QGIS.
Geoscience plugin: drill holes and sections
The Geoscience plugin by Roland Hill provides tools for geoscience and exploration: drill hole desurvey and display, drill hole sections, conversion of alpha/beta structural readings, vector and raster tools, and local grids. You load collar, survey and downhole tables (assays or lithology with hole ID, from and to), desurvey the holes, and plot traces coloured by grade in plan. The section manager then builds cross-sections along a line you draw on the map.
Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin: satellite imagery
The QGIS in Mineral Exploration manual uses the Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin for downloading and processing ASTER, Landsat and Sentinel-2 data. It handles band sets, band ratios and classification, which covers most first-pass alteration mapping in QGIS geology work.
3D views
QGIS has a native 3D map view, and the QGIS2threejs plugin exports 3D scenes to a web browser. Neither replaces a 3D geological modelling package, but draping geology and targets over a digital elevation model is a quick way to see how structures relate to topography, and a useful figure for landholders.
- 📊 Geochemistry: style assay points by value, then grid and contour surface data such as soils.
- 📊 Geophysics: import grids, apply colour ramps and hillshades, and extract profiles.
- Structural data: plot strike and dip symbols rotated by field values.
- ⚠ Limits: QGIS is not a resource-estimation or block-modelling tool. When the project reaches that stage, the data moves to dedicated geological modelling software (our Leapfrog geology software guide covers one common choice).
A QGIS for geologists project template your team can reuse
The biggest time saver with QGIS for geologists is not a plugin. It is a project template that every new licence starts from, so nobody rebuilds layer styles, coordinate settings and print layouts from scratch. A template also makes projects comparable: the same symbols, the same folder names, the same attribute fields.
What goes in the template
- Folder structure: raw data (as received, never edited), working data, imagery, outputs and a short readme.
- A master GeoPackage: empty layers for outcrops, structures, samples, drill collars, tracks and licence boundaries, each with fixed field names and value lists.
- Styles: geology symbols from a standard set, sample points graduated by value, drill traces coloured by grade.
- Print layouts: A4 and A3 figures with scale bar, north arrow, datum note, disclaimer and logo.
- Base layers: links to free imagery and elevation data, rather than copies, to keep projects small.
Rules that keep the data clean
Write down a handful of rules and put them in the readme. One sample ID format, matching the laboratory’s. One date format. Coordinates recorded in the project system, with the GPS model noted. Lithology and alteration codes from a fixed list, not free text. These rules matter more for QGIS for geologists than for most users, because exploration data flows on into modelling software, laboratories and technical reports, and every mismatch has to be fixed by hand later.
Training a new geologist
A geologist who already knows another GIS can usually work productively in QGIS within days, because the concepts are the same. The time goes on project conventions rather than buttons. Pair the template with a short exercise on a finished project: load the drill holes, make a section, grid the soils and print a figure. That one afternoon teaches more about QGIS for geologists than any general course.
Keep the template in a shared folder or repository with a version number and change notes. When you improve a style or add a field, every new project picks it up, and old projects can be upgraded deliberately rather than drifting apart.
Mineral mapping using GIS and satellite data
Free satellite data is the cheapest first look at a licence. Sentinel-2 has 13 spectral bands (four at 10 m, six at 20 m and three at 60 m) over a 290 km swath, with a five-day revisit at the equator from two satellites. Landsat 8 provides 30 m multispectral bands and a 15 m panchromatic band, and the whole Landsat archive has been free since 2008. ASTER adds historical shortwave-infrared data at 30 m, but NASA’s ASTER transition notice confirms SWIR stopped producing usable data in April 2008 and the thermal subsystem was turned off on 16 January 2026.
In a GIS, mineral mapping usually means band ratios and simple classifications that highlight iron oxides, clays or carbonates, checked against geology and field data. It is a screening tool: it tells you where to walk, not what is there. Our guide to remote sensing methods for mineral exploration covers sensors and techniques in more depth.
A simple satellite workflow in QGIS
- Download cloud-free scenes over the licence and clip them to a buffer around it.
- Build a true-colour and a false-colour composite to see outcrop, vegetation and drainage.
- Calculate band ratios suited to the minerals of interest, and stretch them for display.
- Overlay faults, known occurrences and geochemistry; look for coincidences, not single anomalies.
- Turn the best coincidences into field targets with a clear note of why each one was chosen.
Dense vegetation, lichen, laterite and transported cover all change the spectral signal. A “clay anomaly” can be a dry riverbed; an iron-oxide high can be a laterite cap. Treat every satellite anomaly as a question for the field crew.
Planning sampling grids with QGIS for geologists
Once targets are ranked, the GIS is where the sampling programme is designed. In QGIS for geologists this is usually a few processing steps: create a grid of lines at the chosen azimuth and spacing, generate points along each line, clip to the licence, then export the points to handheld GPS units with sample IDs already assigned. Lines are laid across the expected strike, sample points generated along them, and the grid clipped to the licence and to access. The spacing decides both the cost and the size of anomaly you can detect: a grid with lines 400 m apart can miss a 200 m-wide target entirely.
Pre-assigning IDs in the office is worth the effort. The field crew records the ID printed on the bag, the laboratory reports against the same ID, and the join back to the map works first time. QGIS for geologists makes the grid design fast; the discipline around IDs is what makes the results usable.
Soil and rock-chip sampling grid planner
Assumptions: a regular rectangular grid covering the whole area, one sample per grid node, no duplicates, standards or infill. The cost per sample and daily rate are your own figures (collection, preparation, assay and freight); the defaults are placeholders, not quotes, so replace them with your laboratory’s and crew’s numbers. Access, terrain and permits are excluded. Checked September 2026.
The chart below applies the same arithmetic to a 1,000-hectare licence at four grid densities. Going from 800 m by 200 m to 100 m by 25 m multiplies the sample count by 64, which is why most programmes start wide and infill only where the first pass is anomalous.
In forest and farmland, every sampling line can mean clearing and access tracks. Screening the licence first and sampling only the best targets on a wide grid, then infilling, reduces disturbance and landholder friction.
ArcGIS for mining and Esri geology tools
ArcGIS for mining work usually means ArcGIS Pro on the desktop, with web maps and field apps around it. Esri’s mining industry page describes location intelligence as fundamental across the mining life cycle, from mineral exploration to mine remediation, and splits its offering into exploration, operations, environmental health and safety, and logistics. Where a company already runs Esri enterprise systems, geologists often use ArcGIS geology workflows simply to stay in step with the rest of the business.
The Esri geologic mapping template
The Esri geologic mapping template is the best-known Esri geology resource. A USGS workshop paper by Esri cartographers Charlie Frye and Janel Day, “The ESRI Geologic Mapping Template” (USGS Open-File Report 2010-1335), describes it as an ArcGIS implementation of the FGDC Digital Cartographic Standard for Geologic Map Symbolization. That standard, prepared by the USGS for the FGDC, was published in August 2006 with about 3,000 symbols. Over four years, following USGS guidance, Esri developed more than 1,000 of them, focusing on the most used, and the template followed in early 2009.
USGS GeMS for publishing geologic maps
For published geologic maps, the reference schema in the United States is GeMS. The National Geologic Map Database describes GeMS (Geologic Map Schema) as the standard for geologic map publications funded by the USGS National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program. It was formally published in September 2020 and succeeds NCGMP09. The USGS maintains GeMS Tools for ArcGIS Pro, a Python toolbox for creating and validating GeMS databases, and the GeMS pages also include guidance on using QGIS.
QGIS geology or ArcGIS geology: how to choose
Both packages can do almost everything an exploration geologist needs on the map, so the case for QGIS for geologists is rarely about missing features. The choice usually comes down to cost, what the rest of the organisation uses, and which standards you must deliver to.
| Question | QGIS | ArcGIS Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Free and open source (GPLv2+) | Commercial licence from Esri |
| Drill holes and sections | Geoscience plugin: desurvey, traces, sections | Available through Esri tools and third-party add-ins; check your version |
| Geologic symbols | Open symbol sets based on FGDC and BGS | Esri geologic mapping template (FGDC implementation) |
| US geologic map publication (GeMS) | GeMS pages include QGIS guidance | USGS GeMS Tools for ArcGIS Pro |
| Satellite processing | Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin | Built-in raster and imagery tools, depending on licence |
| Enterprise and web | Several open-source server options | ArcGIS Online and Enterprise, widely used in large companies |
A common pattern is QGIS for geologists in the field and on small projects, with ArcGIS where the company or government client requires it. Because both read the same open formats (GeoPackage, shapefile, GeoTIFF), moving data between them is routine if the coordinate system and attribute names are kept tidy.
In due diligence on an exploration project, ask for the GIS project itself: sample locations, assays, maps and licence boundaries. Figures in a presentation can be cropped or selective; the underlying layers show how much data really supports each target.
Where our satellite reports fit in your GIS
Our satellite-based mineral detection goes further than band ratios in a desktop GIS. We analyse multispectral and hyperspectral data with proprietary algorithms to flag likely mineralised target zones, alteration halos, faults and fractures, and deliver the results as a PDF plus georeferenced GIS files you can overlay in your GIS alongside your own layers. You send coordinates, a KML/KMZ file or a polygon with country and target mineral; delivery takes 5–20 business days.
- 📊 Premium report: high-potential zones, prospectivity heatmaps, estimated location and depth ranges, geological interpretation and seasonal anomaly validation.
- 📊 Premium+ report: adds TargetMax™ Drilling Intelligence and interactive 3D subsurface models.
- Track record: 100,000+ hectares scanned for 20+ mineral types in 25+ countries, with timelines cut from months to days and up to 80–85% lower early-exploration cost.
- ⚠ Scope: exploration targets for field checking, not resources.
See a sample of satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping, or draw your licence on mining.farmonaut.com: Map Your Mining Site. For the wider exploration sequence, see our mineral exploration guide.
Put ranked targets into your GIS this month.
Send us your licence boundary and target mineral. We return target zones, alteration and structural layers as georeferenced GIS files, ready to overlay on your maps and plan sampling grids around.
Common GIS mistakes on exploration projects
- ⚠ Mixed coordinate systems. WGS84 GPS points, a local mine grid and UTM maps in one project, reprojected on the fly without anyone checking.
- Sample IDs that do not match the lab. A typo in the field sheet breaks the join between location and assay.
- No metadata. Layers without source, date and accuracy notes lose their value the day their author leaves.
- Over-trusting imagery. A colourful ratio image is a hypothesis, not a result.
- Maps without a scale bar or datum. Regulators and reviewers notice, and so do investors.
Build a print layout with your logo, north arrow, scale bar, datum note and disclaimer, and reuse it for every figure. Consistent maps look more credible and take minutes rather than hours to produce.
Frequently asked questions
Is QGIS good for geologists?
Yes. QGIS for geologists covers compilation, field data, drill hole traces and sections (via the Geoscience plugin), geochemistry gridding, geophysical grids, satellite processing and map layouts, at no licence cost. It does not replace geological modelling or resource estimation software.
What QGIS plugins are useful for geology?
Commonly used ones include the Geoscience plugin for drill holes, sections and structural data, the Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin for Landsat, Sentinel-2 and ASTER processing, and QGIS2threejs for 3D web scenes. Open geologic symbol libraries based on the FGDC standard help with map styling.
What is the Esri geologic mapping template?
It is Esri’s ArcGIS implementation of the FGDC Digital Cartographic Standard for Geologic Map Symbolization, developed with USGS guidance. Esri built more than 1,000 of the standard’s roughly 3,000 symbols, and the template followed in early 2009, according to USGS Open-File Report 2010-1335.
How is ArcGIS used for mining?
Esri describes GIS as fundamental across the mining life cycle, from exploration to remediation, covering exploration, operations, environmental health and safety, and logistics. Geologists use ArcGIS Pro for mapping and analysis, often within a wider company GIS.
What is GeMS in geology?
GeMS (Geologic Map Schema) is the USGS standard for publishing geologic map databases funded by the National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program. It was published in September 2020, succeeds NCGMP09, and comes with GeMS Tools for ArcGIS Pro plus guidance for QGIS users.
Can I do mineral mapping using GIS and free satellite data?
Yes, as a first screen. Sentinel-2 and Landsat band ratios can highlight iron oxides and clays, and archived ASTER SWIR data (before April 2008) adds alteration detail. Results need field checking, and specialist multispectral and hyperspectral analysis gives more mineral-level detail.
Reviewed September 2026 against the QGIS project site, the QGIS in Mineral Exploration manual, the QGIS plugin page for the Geoscience plugin, the geologic-symbols repository, USGS Open-File Report 2010-1335 on the Esri Geologic Mapping Template, the USGS NGMDB GeMS page and GeMS Tools for ArcGIS Pro, Esri’s mining industry page, Copernicus SentiWiki on Sentinel-2, USGS pages on Landsat 8 and the free Landsat archive, and NASA’s ASTER SWIR advisory and ASTER transition notice.
Software features and plugin compatibility change between versions; check the official pages for the release you use. We have no commercial relationship with Esri or the plugin authors named. Satellite targets are exploration targets, not mineral resources.
