I downloaded the MSHA's (Mine Safety and Health Administration) public datasets and create a visualization of all the mines in the US complete with the operators and details on each site.
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Discussion (50 Comments)
koshergweilo•about 21 hours ago
I don't know why, but when I read the title I assumed the map was about landmines.
No, these are the cool ones that take stuff out of the ground, not the ones that destroy everything above them
rpozarickij•about 5 hours ago
I'm pretty sure for me "mining.fyi" wouldn't have created any associations with landmines (although "mines.fyi" does seem to match the contents of the website closer).
It'd be really interesting to see A/B testing results about what most people associate the word "mines" with (I wouldn't be surprised if that would be landmines in this day and age).
jedberg•about 20 hours ago
Same! And then I saw three near my house and thought "if they know where they are, why haven't they been removed???"
Then I clicked on one and saw it was the name of our local rock quarry. :)
guessmyname•about 20 hours ago
Oh! I thought it was landmines too and was very confused + concerned when I saw dots near where I live.
andrew_mason1•about 7 hours ago
hey now, landmines destroy stuff below them too
buildbot•about 20 hours ago
I had exactly the same thought, and was quite intrigued. Very disappointed actually, it would be cool if there was open data about land mines.
AlotOfReading•about 19 hours ago
The US government has been pretty good about cleaning up the UXO it knows about, which means what's left is the UXO it doesn't know about. You'll find it near most of the current and former testing ranges, particularly Yuma Proving Ground where there's trails leading right from the adjacent BLM land into areas with potential UXO. The only real barriers are a few signs and the law.
pimlottc•about 20 hours ago
Please reduce the aggregation of map markers. It's not helpful to group every mine in southwest US in a single point in California that makes it look like they are none in any other state. I see this all the time on maps and it's really frustrating. Aggregate markers are helpful when the individual points are actually overlapping on the map, otherwise they obscure location data.
nick49488171•about 17 hours ago
Agreed. Huge annoyance when looking for routes on MountainProject as one example.
phillipseamore•about 19 hours ago
True. Clustering on a map is usually a sign that a map was setup by someone that doesn't use it or has no interest in the data.
charv•about 17 hours ago
Strong disagree — aggregate markers were super useful when browsing the map on mobile! Maybe need to add a flag for mobile vs. desktop, but the experience would be a lot worse on mobile without them.
pimlottc•about 5 hours ago
I tried it on mobile. The clustering reduces it to 6 points for all of North America. My phone has over 3 million pixels, surely there’s room for more detail than that.
Firehawke•about 15 hours ago
Strong disagree. Zoom in and the clusters break up. Without the clustering, the map is a total mess when zoomed out.
pimlottc•about 5 hours ago
There’s a place for clustering but it doesn’t need to be so aggressive
tastyfreeze•about 20 hours ago
USGS MRDATA has a lot more mines. Their data is also freely available for download. I use their datasets and base maps for my personal GIS projects.
It includes what most would call quarries and it doesn't include anywhere near all of them (there are basically infinite invisible quarries everywhere to make concrete because it doesn't transport well).
lattrommi•about 4 hours ago
Set state to Ohio. Set status to Abandoned.
Wonder why mines located in Ohio, show up in Greenland, Central America and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
On closer inspection, the Lat/Long are switched on some of these anomalies. I did not check them all.
alan_sass•about 19 hours ago
Just a heads-up that this is nowhere near "all the mines" in Nevada.
I've explored quite a few personally, live by some, and that entire list of my memories is missing.
NV is also not included in the list of top 10 states which is a clear indicator of missing data fwiw.
HardwareLust•about 21 hours ago
I saw your title and my first thought was "Why are there landmines in the US?" lol.
buildbot•about 20 hours ago
Apparently there are in fact, 0. Publicly, at least.
jmspring•about 5 hours ago
There seem to be more quarries in where I looked (near Reno) than mines. 16:1 in Allegheny is not on there - interesting place. It’s still semi active.
SaberTail•about 22 hours ago
This doesn't seem to be complete. It's missing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, for example, which should be southeast of Carlsbad, NM. It's a underground salt (metal/non-metal) mine, and MSHA definitely regulates it
greggsy•about 20 hours ago
The state numbers don’t seem to marry up, unless they’re indicative of something else?
snypher•about 20 hours ago
WIPP isn't really a mine, right? More like an Amazon warehouse.
SaberTail•about 2 hours ago
as far as MSHA is concerned it is. They take salt out of the ground to make room for the waste.
kenforthewin•about 22 hours ago
I'm glad it's those kinds of mines rather than the ones I first thought of.
utool•about 10 hours ago
I was trying to figure out where to send my son to work this summer. This makes it easier. Thank, very cool!
Based on the info if you click into them, likely no. I would have expected them to be incidental materials from tunneling, but reading the description that's not the case.
(I guess technically a "surface mine" for "Construction Sand and Gravel".)
maxbond•about 21 hours ago
Once you learn how to spot these you'll see them everywhere on road trips and such.
greggsy•about 20 hours ago
I see quarries everywhere, and they’re kind of required near any city or road project around Australia. Never considered them as a mine though… more like a ‘general resource site’?
dboreham•about 20 hours ago
The data set includes gravel pits. You can filter them out by selecting "Underground" for "Type".
defrost•about 19 hours ago
Wouldn't that also filter out every open cut surface mine that strips overburden and directly extracts near surface coal, copper deposits, iron ore, etc.
Not every mine is a "classic" underground mine with tunnels, etc.
See (for example) the W.Australian SuperPit gold mine which consolidated every shaft mine in a particular region into a single open pit that goes deeper than any pre existing underground mine in that area.
nektro•about 21 hours ago
I love the idea of a site like this existing but the expanding dots is a really bad way to visualize this.
advisedwang•about 22 hours ago
This seems to include cement works and other processing plants that have somewhat mine-like output but aren't actually extracting anything from the ground at that site.
bombcar•about 19 hours ago
And it doesn't include all of those.
w10-1•about 21 hours ago
Can't see a thing. Dark on dark in Safari 26.3.
doe88•about 10 hours ago
Very dense, there is no mineshaft gap left!
thirtygeo•about 15 hours ago
Add Canada! Every province has a GIS repository of mines
greggsy•about 20 hours ago
Is oil considered a mined mineral, or just shale oil?
Exuma•about 22 hours ago
How many of these pose asbestos hazards like the Libby mine?
dboreham•about 19 hours ago
The Libby mine isn't in the data set because it's no longer operational.
defrost•about 18 hours ago
The US, like many countries and regions, has poor coverage of abandoned, closed, and shuttered mine sites despite such sites still posing an ongoing danger in terms of imminent physical danger (collapse, decay, etc) and untreated waste piles and ponds leaching toxins into ground waters, etc.
To answer the question posed, "how many (US?) mine sites pose a danger of type {X}" requires crawling the US BLM datasets, the OSHA datasets, the archived (from when active) MSHA datasets, and having a some luck onside for various specific sites due to large gaps and periods of not caring at all.
Various transnational global mining companies (Rio Tinto, et al) have extensive datasets on global resources and minesites, both operational, and past and potential future sites.
jeffbee•about 18 hours ago
The map has a "Status" predicate.
LowLevelKernel•about 18 hours ago
Why is it active post 2001? What purpose?
jeffbee•about 18 hours ago
I looked for all my local mines and none of them are on here. It seems that all of the listed mines for California are stone quarries. It omits the numerous other mines.
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metalman•about 7 hours ago
under 50, actual underground mines for metals, under 175 total open pit and underground mines for metal
the real numbers for rock quarys * are hidden, and I must assume that they are also
a small portion of the "total"
* sell actual blocks of stone vs gravel/fill/agregate
Discussion (50 Comments)
No, these are the cool ones that take stuff out of the ground, not the ones that destroy everything above them
It'd be really interesting to see A/B testing results about what most people associate the word "mines" with (I wouldn't be surprised if that would be landmines in this day and age).
Then I clicked on one and saw it was the name of our local rock quarry. :)
https://mrdata.usgs.gov/
Wonder why mines located in Ohio, show up in Greenland, Central America and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
On closer inspection, the Lat/Long are switched on some of these anomalies. I did not check them all.
(I guess technically a "surface mine" for "Construction Sand and Gravel".)
Not every mine is a "classic" underground mine with tunnels, etc.
See (for example) the W.Australian SuperPit gold mine which consolidated every shaft mine in a particular region into a single open pit that goes deeper than any pre existing underground mine in that area.
To answer the question posed, "how many (US?) mine sites pose a danger of type {X}" requires crawling the US BLM datasets, the OSHA datasets, the archived (from when active) MSHA datasets, and having a some luck onside for various specific sites due to large gaps and periods of not caring at all.
See:
* https://www.epa.gov/epcra/does-msha-have-jurisdiction-over-i...
* https://www.blm.gov/programs/aml-environmental-cleanup/aml
Various transnational global mining companies (Rio Tinto, et al) have extensive datasets on global resources and minesites, both operational, and past and potential future sites.
* sell actual blocks of stone vs gravel/fill/agregate