Non-Fuel Mineral Resource Assessment GIS of Afghanistan (version 1.1, on-line release) Prepared in cooperation with the Afghanistan Geological Survey By Mihalasky, M.J. 1, Doebrich,J.L. 2, Wahl, R.W. 3, Ludington, S.D. 4, Orris, G.J. 5, Bliss, J.D. 5, Sutphin, D.M. 2, Schruben, P.G. 2, Bolm, K.S. 5, Hubbard, B.E. 2, Mars, J.C. 2, Peters, S.G. 2, Wandrey, C.J. 3, and Chirico, Pete 2. 1 U.S. Geological Survey, Spokane, WA 2 U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA 3 U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, CO 4 U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA 5 U.S. Geological Survey, Tucson, AZ U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2007-1214 U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey Summary: These files constitute a GIS database of industrial and metallic mineral resource assessment tracts, and is an accompaniment to the non-fuel mineral resource assessment of Afghanistan. Also included are geologic, structural, geochemical, geophysical, environmental, political, and other geospatial datasets covering Afghanistan. The purpose of this GIS database is to provide a collection of basic geoscientific datasets to support the assessment of mineral resources, their further exploration and development, and to provide a partial index of known data resources. GIS Database Installation of Setup: About 10 gigabytes of free hard drive space will be required for download and installation of the self-extracting archive files that make up the GIS database. These archive files (.exe and .rar) include the following: File Size (mb) Contents ------------- --------- -------- afgnmin.exe 263.7 Main files, with folder structure of database admin.exe 9.4 <-+ asmttrks.exe 131.9 | base.exe 180.4 | carto.exe 3.9 | cult.exe 0.1 | dem.part1.exe 256.0 | dem.part2.rar 256.0 | dem.part3.rar 45.4 | envl.exe 109.0 |-- GIS datasets, which will need to be geog.exe 0.1 | decompressed in the afgnmin\gis geol.exe 141.6 | folder that is created when the main geophys.exe 122.9 | archive (afgnmin.exe) is decompressed hydro.exe 14.7 | (see instructions below) infra.exe 0.2 | min.exe 112.9 | pop.exe 9.0 | sat.part1.exe 256.0 | sat.part2.rar 256.0 | sat.part3.rar 256.0 | sat.part4.rar 256.0 | sat.part5.rar 256.0 | sat.part6.rar 256.0 | trans.exe 8.9 <-+ Generally speaking, the installation and set-up procedure is as follows: 1) Download the above self-extracting (.exe and .rar), compressed archive files. 2) Decompress the main archive afgnmin.exe, which will create the database folder structure on your hard drive and partially populate these folders. 3) Move all of the other .exe and .rar archives (not afgnmin.exe) to the folder :\afgnmin\gis where they each will be decompressed to create a folder populated with GIS datasets. After the above self-extracting (.exe and .rar), compressed archive files have been downloaded, begin the procedure of installing and setting-up the GIS database by moving all of the archive files to the root of any hard drive that has sufficient space (i.e., move the files to C:\ or D:\ E:\ or any other drive that has at least 10 gigs of free space available). Continue by double-clicking the afgnmin.exe file. A self-extracting archive dialog box will appear. Click the the "Install" button. The archive file will decompress and files will be extracted into a folder :\afgnmin, which will be created automatically. Extraction of the archived files also will create the folder structure of the GIS database as it is contained on the original DVD, which is necessary to properly access the files using the provided ArcGIS and ArcReader project files (.mxd and pmf), as well as other information in html format. Once afgnmin.exe has been decompressed, move the remaining .exe and .rar archive files to the folder :\afgnmin\gis, and repeat the installation procedure above, double-clicking on each of the individual archives. The installation should create new folders in :\afgnmin\gis and populate them with GIS datasets. The names of these folders will be the same as the archive names. When finished, the .exe and .rar archive files may be moved and stored elsewhere, or deleted. If problems are encountered during archive decompression, it is suggested that you re-download the particular problematic archive file, and try again. Getting Started: The following files reside in the folder :\afgnmin... Afghanistan.html - An html document containing information about the Afghanistan Non-Fuel Mineral Resources Assessment GIS database. Afghanistan.mxd - An ESRI ArcGIS 9.X project file with relative paths. If the user has ArcGIS 9.X installed, double-click this file to open the Afghan Mineral Resources Assessment GIS database. For faster performance, copy the Afghanistan.mxd and \gis directory to an empty directory on a hard drive (~ 4.5 gigabytes of space is required). Note that the .mxd project file has not been tested with 8.X versions of ArcGIS. Afghanistan.pmf - An ESRI portable map format document. This document can be open and read with ArcREADER, a free PMF viewing program from ESRI. For faster performance, copy the Afghanistan.pmf and \gis directory to an empty directory on a hard drive (~ 4.5 gigabytes of space is required). In some instances, there have been issues with loading and viewing raster datasets in ArcGIS, and it is advised that user apply all of the latest ERSI patches and service packs if the raster datasets in this GIS database do not display properly. Problems may also be related to Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 to version 7, for which a patch is also avalable. Basic Directory Structure: \docs - Documents related to the Afghan Mineral Resources Assessment GIS database. \gis - The Afghan Mineral Resources Assessment GIS database files. \html - html document files \resources - Utility programs useful for accessing and viewing the GIS, archive, and document files on this CD, including: 1) Esri ArcReader, a free PMF viewing program 2) ArcExplorer, a free Java-based GIS data viewing program 3) Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free PDF file reader 4) WinZip, a limited-time trial archive program to open .zip files 5) A folder containing font files, which, if not already installed, should be dragged and dropped into the user's C:\WINDOWS\Fonts subdirectory to properly display the Non-Fuel Mineral Resource Assessment GIS of Afghanistan html report. mjm June, 2008