Training Modules: Methods and Tools for Estimating Mercury Use and Documenting Practices in Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining (ASGM)

These documents together form an integrated training and guidance package for conducting baseline inventories in artisanal and small-scale gold mining. The ASGM Baseline Training Course Syllabus defines the overall structure and learning objectives of the programme, combining classroom instruction, field training, data analysis, and development of country-specific inventory approaches. The conceptual foundation is provided by Introduction to ASGM, which explains the geological context of gold, common extraction and processing techniques, gold grade and purity, mercury use, supply chains, workforce organization, seasonality, and associated health and environmental impacts. Building on this, Introduction to ASGM Baseline explains why baseline inventories are required, particularly for national planning, and outlines the baseline process from national scoping to site, regional, and national estimates. It introduces extraction-based, processing-based, and earnings-based estimation approaches and stresses the importance of cross-checking and triangulation. The practical implementation of these concepts is detailed in Collecting Baseline Information, which provides step-by-step guidance on fieldwork planning, stakeholder engagement, interviews, observations, counts, physical measurements, and data organization, with emphasis on adaptive methods and continuous data review. The ASGM Baseline Practice Exercise translates theory into application by guiding users through a fictional mining community dataset, demonstrating how field data are analysed to estimate gold production, mercury use, and workforce size using multiple methods. Finally, ASGM Baseline Case Study: Nicaragua illustrates real-world application of these methods, showing how national scoping, region-specific methodologies, processing system counts, and field measurements were used to produce regional and national estimates. Together, these documents provide both methodological rigor and practical tools for reliable ASGM baseline development.