Geological, geophysical, and mineral resource data relevant to sandstone-hosted copper deposits in central Kazakhstan

Central Kazakhstan is host to one of the world's giant sandstone-hosted copper deposits, the Dzhezkazgan deposit, and several similar, smaller deposits (Gablina, 1981; Susura and others, 1986; Cox and others, 2003; Hitzman and others, 2005). As part of its 2010 Global Mineral Resource Assessment Project (GMRAP), the United Stated Geological Survey (USGS) is assessing the potential for other, undiscovered deposits of this type in the surrounding region of central Kazakhstan. As part of this effort, Boris Syusyura compiled, partially translated, and converted to preliminary digital format an array of mostly unpublished geologic, geophysical and mineral resource data, for this region. These data are from the archives of the former Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (of which Kazakhstan was one of the member republics until its dissolution in 1991), as well as from later archives of the Republic of Kazakhstan or of the Kazakhstan consulting firm Mining Economic Consulting (MEC). The digital data are primarily map-based displays of information that were transmitted either in ESRI ArcGIS, geo-referenced format, or as ungeoreferenced map image files. In addition to the data processing that was necessary to complete the sandstone-hosted copper assessement for the Chu-Sarysu basin, Kazakhstan, Box and Wallis reviewed all the data, translated Russian cyrillic text where necessary, inspected the maps for consistency, geo-referenced the unprojected map images, and reorganized the data into the filename and folder structure of this publication.