Introduction
Today, the use of airborne geophysical surveys as a fundamental tool in mineral exploration and regional geological mapping has become standard practice. However, Greenland’s remoteness, lack of infrastructure, and arctic and alpine conditions make geophysical data acquisition more challenging and expensive than in most other regions, and not all areas have been systematic surveyed yet. The southern, western, and southeastern parts of the ice-free area are now well-covered by regional high-resolution magnetic surveys, but large parts of the northern and northeastern parts still lack systematic regional geophysical surveys of any kind, and future surveying activities are required to fill these gaps. Despite the lack of regional background data, rising exploration activity in the past two decades has led to a large increase of more detailed license specific geophysical datasets and many areas prospective for mineral deposits are well-covered not only with magnetic, but often also electromagnetic, gravity or radiometry data. In addition to the classical geophysical methods, hyperspectral imaging techniques have great potential for mapping Greenland’s geology due to the excellent rock exposure. In the early 2000s airborne hyperspectral surveys were introduced and since then several areas have been surveyed by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland – GEUS and on behalf of the Government of Greenland. The majority of this data is now publicly available and accessible via the Greenland Mineral Resources Portal at no cost.