DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTENT AND DIGITAL FILES FOR SPATIAL DATABASES OF GEOLOGICAL, GEOPHYSICAL, AND MINERAL RESOURCE DATA RELEVANT TO SANDSTONE-HOSTED COPPER DEPOSITS IN CENTRAL KAZAKHSTAN U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OPEN FILE REPORT 2010-1124 http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1124 By Boris Syusyura, Stephen E. Box, and John C. Wallis README -- INTRODUCTION This document serves to identify and describe the digital files that comprise this Open File Report. Those files are available for download at http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1124/ and include both Geographic Information System (GIS) software files that are accessible with an Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI(R)) compatible, commercial GIS (or with ESRI's ArcReader utility; a free map viewer with no editing capabilities, available at http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcreader/) along with Portable Document Format (PDF) files that are viewable with a reader or web browser plug-in (freely available on the Internet at http://get.adobe.com/reader/). The data presented here were collected in support of the Global Mineral Resource Assessment Project of the United States Geological Survey (USGS). These data were used in the assessment of the potential for undiscovered sediment-hosted copper deposits within a region in central Kazakhstan, an area of known world class deposits of this type. This report organizes and presents a wide range of related GIS data and other digital map information of mostly unpublished geologic, geophysical and mineral resource data for the region of central Kazakhstan. 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), having been subsequently processed by the authors to render the data more accessible. OPEN FILE REPORT 2010-1124 CONTENTS The GIS data comprise 27 ESRI ArcMAP(TM) 9.1 GIS Project Files and map documents (mxd) along with the corresponding Published Map Files (pmf), 142 associated shapefiles (shp), 161 layer files (lyr), 76 JPEGs (jpg), and 3 TIFFS (tif). We have attempted to organize the data logically by region and sub-region to facilitate access (insert link to files that detail the data organization): \1-KAZAKHSTAN_REGIONAL \2-TENIZ BASIN \TZ_CU-PROGNOSIS \TZ_GEOLMAP \TZ_ISOPACH \TZ_T1-ISODEPTH \3-CHU-SARYSU-ENTIRE \CS_A-GEOPHYSICS \CS_GRAVITY \CS_SEISMIC-PROFILES \CS_B-PALEOGEOGRAPHY \CS_PALEOGEOG-MCARBONIF \CS_PALEOGEOG-PERMIAN-LO \CS_PALEOGEOG-PERMIAN-UP \CS_C-STRUCTURE-CONTOUR-MAPS \CS_ELEV-BASE-MCARBONIF \CS_ELEV-BASE-PERM-SALT \CS_ELEV-UNCONF-TOP-PZ \4-CHU-SARYSU-SUBAREAS \CS-DZHEZKAZGAN \CS-IRKUDUK \CS-KARAKOL \CS-KUMOLA \CS-N-CHU-SARYSU \CS-NCS_1-PRE-MZ-GEOLOGY \CS-NCS_2-GEOPHYSICS \CS-NCS_GRAVITY \CS-NCS_MAGNETICS \CS-NCS_3-ISODEPTH-MAPS \CS-NCS_DEPTH-BASE-CARB \CS-NCS_DEPTH-BASE-MCARB \CS-NCS_4-TECTONIC-MAP \CS-NCS_5-STRAT-COLUMN \CS-TASTY \CS-WESTERN-CHU-SARYSU \CS-WCS_STRUCTURES \CS-WCS_KYZYLKAK \CS-ZHAMAN-AIBAT See http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1124/ (data package) for a complete description of the contents of each sub-folder and detailed statements concerning process and data limitations.