USGS Mineral Resources

Live

USGS Mineral Resources Data System — ~304K worldwide mineral deposits across 200+ countries with commodities, development status, and rich per-record geology, plus US conterminous mine-feature points.

What is USGS Mineral Resources?

US Geological Survey Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) and USMIN. MRDS is the consolidated successor to MRDS / MAS-MILS — ~304,000 deposit records spanning 200+ countries with development status (Past Producer / Producer / Occurrence / Prospect / Plant / Raw Prospect), commodity codes (Aluminum, Antimony, Cobalt, Copper, Gold, Iron, Lead, Lithium, Manganese, Molybdenum, Nickel, PGE, Palladium, Platinum, REE, Rhenium, Silver, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten, Uranium, Vanadium, Zinc, Zirconium, Sand and Gravel, Stone, and 165 more), and FIPS / ISO region codes. Pull a single deposit's full record for 26+ subtables — commodities, materials, ages, structures, alteration, districts, ore body, production history, bibliographic references, reporter, host and associated rocks. USMIN adds conterminous-US mine-feature points and polygons (mine shafts, adits, prospects, tailings) digitized from USGS topographic maps with state, county, feature type, topo name, and topo date. Spatial queries supported via bounding box on every search; results are returned in WGS84. Toggle on and use — no setup needed.

Available Tools

searchDeposits
Search ~304K worldwide deposits. Filter by commodity (CU/AU/AG/FE/LI/U/REE…), country, US state, dev_stat, fips_code, bbox.
getDepositById
Full record for one deposit — commodities, materials, ages, ore body, production history, bibliographic references, reporter, rocks.
searchByBbox
Spatial-only deposit search by bounding box [minX, minY, maxX, maxY] in WGS84. Skips attribute filters for fast geo slicing.
countDeposits
Count matching deposits. Best when sliced by commodity / country / state — unfiltered global counts time out.
searchUsminFeatures
US conterminous mine-feature points (Mine Shaft / Adit / Prospect / Tailings…). Requires state. Filter by county, ftr_type, bbox.
getServiceInfo
Endpoints, layer fields, pagination conventions, distinct dev_stat / commodity values, and upstream quirks.

Requirements

No setup required
Toggle on and use — no setup needed.

Quick Setup Guide

Follow these steps to connect your AI agents to this connector

Open /mcp and enable USGS Mineral Resources with the toggle — no credentials needed.

Call searchDeposits with commodity: 'CU' to find copper deposits, then getDepositById on a result for full geology and production history. searchUsminFeatures with state: 'AZ' surfaces conterminous-US mine shafts and prospects.

Connect to Your AI Assistant

Choose your AI assistant below for specific setup instructions

Follow these steps to connect USGS Mineral Resources to Claude:

Step 1: Open Claude Settings

Launch Claude → Click the profile button (bottom left) → Navigate to Settings

Step 2: Access Connectors

Scroll down to the Connectors tab → Navigate to the bottom → Click “Add Custom Connector”

Step 3: Name Your Connector

Enter any name you'd like for this connector

Step 4: Get the Connector URL

Step 5: Add the Connector

Paste the URL in the “Remote MCP Server URL” text box → Click Add

Step 6: Start Using

Your connector is now ready to use in Claude

Follow these steps to connect USGS Mineral Resources to ChatGPT:

Step 1: Enable Developer Mode

Go to Settings → Connectors → Advanced → Enable Developer mode

Step 2: Create New Connector

Go back to Connectors page → Click “Create” (top right)

Step 3: Name Your Connector

Enter any name you'd like for this connector (descriptions are optional)

Step 4: Get the Connector URL

Step 5: Add the URL

Paste the URL in the “MCP Server URL” text box

Step 6: Set Authentication

Click the authentication dropdown → Select “No authentication” (PatchOps handles authentication internally)

Step 7: Create the Connector

Click “I understand and want to continue” checkbox → Press Create

Step 8: Using the Connector

Start a new chat → Click the + button (left of text box) → Open dropdown → Hover over three dots labeled “More” → Select your connector

Instructions for connecting USGS Mineral Resources to GitHub Copilot:

Coming Soon

Detailed setup instructions for GitHub Copilot will be added here.

For other MCP-compatible platforms:

Step 1: Get the Connector URL

Step 2: Add to Configuration

Add this configuration to your MCP settings file. Replace the URL with your specific connector URL from the /mcp page:

"USGS Mineral Resources-MCP": {
  "url": "https://patchops.ai/api/mcp/...",
  "type": "http"
}

Example Configuration

Here’s an example using PatchOps MCP:

"PatchOps-MCP": {
  "url": "https://patchops.ai/api/mcp/...",
  "type": "http"
}