News and Events
The Northwest Territories Geological Survey (NTGS) has released a large, high-resolution airborne magnetic survey of a portion of the Slave Geological Province, NT. The work was funded by the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and the NTGS to inform a variety of mineral exploration and geological research objectives. EON Geosciences Inc. of Montreal, QC conducted the survey.
The aeromagnetic survey was flown in the Itchen Lake-Point Lake area approximately 130 km northwest of the Ekati Diamond Mine. The region is prospective for diamond, gold, and base metal deposits. The...
NTGS staff acknowledge with sadness the passing of Dr. Samuel A. Bowring. Dr. Bowring was well known and respected in the Northwest Territories and was highly regarded for his work on the origin and evolution of continental crust. One of his earliest major contributions, which transformed what geologist know about the early evolution of the Earth, was his work in the 1980s on the Acasta gneiss complex in the Northwest Territories. Dr. Bowring’s age dating work revealed a rare remnant of the Earth’s earliest crust, originally dated at 3.962 billion years old. Subsequent research has shown...
Submit an abstract to present at the 47th Annual Yellowknife Geoscience Forum held November 19 to 21, 2019.
All abstracts must be submitted before 11:59 pm MT Friday, October 4th, 2019.
It is with pleasure that we announce that effective June 1, 2019, the “Petroleum Geosciences” group of the Northwest Territories Geological Survey (NTGS) will be renamed “Energy Geosciences.”
The Government of Northwest Territories recognizes and embraces the economic and social evolution of the past decades toward renewable and alternative energy resources. This shift is also reflected in the NTGS Five-Year Strategic Plan published in 2017, which includes an expanded mandate for energy research in the Northwest Territories by including geothermal energy research. Currently, the Petroleum...
The Northwest Territories has taken that seriously, employing some of the top geological talent in Canada to get in the field, and map the territory’s prodigious potential.
One such employee is Edith Martel — a Project Geologist at the Northwest Territories Geological Survey.
Martel is currently putting her Masters in Earth Science from the University of Waterloo and 20 years of field experience to work at Nonacho Lake — an under-researched region in the southeast of the Northwest Territories between the East Arm of Great Slave Lake and the Saskatchewan border. This kind of fieldwork is...
Young northerners are breaking new ground and getting geoscience information out to NWT residents. Meet Rebecca Canam and Dawson Stone — two Yellowknifers studying at universities in the South and who have been working for the Northwest Territories Geological Surveys (NTGS) over summer. This year, Rebecca and Dawson independently collected data for their undergraduate thesis projects and presented their research at the 2018 Yellowknife Geoscience Forum.
Dawson, a Sir John Franklin graduate and current University of Alberta student, spent seven weeks helping to map bedrock and investigate...
With the momentum and success of the 2018 Yellowknife Geoscience Forum to build on, the NWT Geological Survey (NTGS) hosted some of Canada’s leading minds in a full day workshop on geothermal energy in the North.
On the docket was an overview of geothermal systems, drilling technology, engineering, and the economics of geothermal projects.
It’s a topic highly-relevant to the NWT. Oil and gas reservoirs often also hold geothermal potential as the locations in which each are found share many similarities. Given the NWT’s well-known oil and gas reserves, geothermal is a natural step in the...
ESRI Canada solicits ArcGIS users each year to submit their work for inclusion in their map calendar. The selected maps illustrate how ArcGIS users across Canada are doing exceptional work that improves our environment, economy, and society through mapping and analytics.
ESRI's 2018 Map Calendar will feature a geology map by the NWT Geological Survey's Geomatics Specialist, Kelly Pierce. The map depicts the detailed geological mapping of 2.6 to 2.7 billion-year-old volcanic rocks in the Sharrie Lake area of the Northwest Territories. This map is one of many excellent peer-...
The Northwest Territories Geological Survey released reports on Carlin-type gold and Mactung tungsten deposit potential.
One report details the potential for Carlin-type gold and clastic-dominated zinc-lead deposits in a region of the Northwest Territories' Mackenzie Mountains.
Two additional reports include a review of field observations and geological knowledge at the Mactung Tungsten skarn deposit as well as a bedrock map covering an area of 44 square kilometres surrounding the deposit. Mactung, currently owned by the Government of Northwest Territories, is home to one of the world’...
Official opening of the Geological Materials Storage Facility in September 2017. The Government of the Northwest Territories is committed to supporting mineral exploration, and with the grand opening of the new NWT Geological Materials Storage Facility, access to geoscience data is now easier than ever before.
The facility houses the largest publically available collection of kimberlites in the world. It will allow analysis of historical core samples to test new mineral exploration ideas at a fraction of the cost of drilling new ones.
Managed by the NWT Geological Survey, the facility...