Should Geochemical Indicators Be Integrated to Produce Enhanced Signatures of Mineral Deposits? A Discussion with Regard to Exploration Scale

In this paper, we discuss the concepts behind dispersion patterns of geochemical anomalies when applied for prospecting mineral deposits in different exploration scales. The patterns vary from regional to local scale geochemical surveys, which is due to the differences in the corresponding underlying processes. Thus the ways for modelling the dispersion patterns and driving significant geochemical signatures should consider the variety when the area under study are delimited from regional to deposit scales exploration. Subsequently, this paper faces with two questions, namely (1) should various geochemical indicators be integrated in different exploration scales aiming at introducing stronger signatures of mineral deposits? and (2) how does the exploration scale affect dispersion patterns of geochemical indicator elements? We demonstrate that the exploration scale plays an important role on the reliability and usefulness of geochemical anomaly models. In this regard, although fusion may achieve reputable outcomes at regional scale exploration, we demonstrate that integration doesn’t gain accurate results for exploration at local scale, which is due to the diversities of the elemental distributions in the two different scales. This achievement is approved by comparing two geochemical signatures, one obtained by integration of two different indicator factors and the other one that used a single factor. The former produces almost the whole studied area as prospective, while the later recognizes ~10% of the area for further exploration, which is closely related to the porphyry Cu mineralization and is verified by drilling results.

Should Geochemical Indicators Be Integrated to Produce Enhanced Signatures of Mineral Deposits? A Discussion with Regard to Exploration Scale Keywords:

Exploration scale , Geochemical anomalies , Zoning pattern , Integration , Stronger indicator