INSPIRE: Map of Near-Surface Deposits of the Federal Republic of Germany 1:250,000 (KOR250)

The KOR250 (INSPIRE) in the scale of 1:250,000 shows occurrences and deposits of mineral resources in Germany, which lie close to the Earth’s surface, i.e. can be mined in open-pits, quarries or near-surface mines. These mineral resources include industrial minerals, aggregates, peat, lignite, oil shales, and natural brines. The map is derived from the KOR250, the digital successor of the map series KOR200 „Map of Near-Surface Deposits of the Federal Republic of Germany 1:200,000”, which has been published since 1984. The KOR200 and KOR250 have been published by the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources together with the State Geological Surveys of the federal states on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Primary purpose of the KOR250 is to display Germany’s potential of domestic raw materials in a comparable way. The explanations given in the printed booklets accompanying the KOR200 are not available in the digital KOR250. In the KOR250 besides the defined deposits and differently coloured areas of raw materials, "active mines" (= operations) at time of publication or "focal points of several active mines" are marked with one symbol each. These mines are not included in the KOR250 (INSPIRE) as often the headquarters of the mining company and not the mining site itself is displayed as well as in many regions the dataset is outdated. As the map sheets of the KOR200 have been generated over more than three decades the timeliness of data is extremely different. For more detail, the current large-scale raw material maps of the Federal State Geological Surveys should always be consulted. The point data displayed in KOR250 (INSPIRE) indicate very small, but worth mentioning prospects of certain raw materials. According to the Data Specification on Mineral Resources (D2.8.III.21) the content of the map is stored in two INSPIRE-compliant GML files: KOR250_EarthResource_polygon.gml comprises the mineral resources as polygons. KOR250_EarthResource_point.gml comprises the mineral resources as points. The GML files together with a Readme.txt file are provided in ZIP format (KOR250-INSPIRE.zip). The Readme.text file (German/English) contains detailed information on the GML files content. Data transformation was proceeded by using the INSPIRE Solution Pack for FME according to the INSPIRE requirements. Notes: It should be noted that according to the INSPIRE commodity code list, most magmatites and metamorphites were assigned to the two values "granite" and "basalt". From a geological point of view and with regard to its origin, this assignment is often misleading. For more information on the outcropping rock of a specific raw material occurrence, the German name from the original KOR250 was mapped to the attribute name of the class GeologicFeature.