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Diverse deposit-types or mineral systems form by diverse geological processes, so translation of knowledge about the controls of mineralization acquired from the 4D geological modeling into 2D spatial predictor maps is a major challenge for prospectivity analysis. In this regard, mathematical functions have been used to model the conceptual or perceived spatial relationships between geological variables and targeted type or system of mineralization. In this paper, due to the different models of spatial relationships between predictors and mineral deposits, we investigated the performance of different fuzzification functions to quantify the relationships. We demonstrated that various types of relationships between exploration features and a mineralization-type sought could be quantified using different fuzzification functions for prospectivity analysis. We illustrated the process of the prospectivity analysis by using a data set of orogenic gold deposits in Saqez-Sardasht Goldfield, Iran. Prospectivity modeling of orogenic gold mineralization in the study area showed that the NE-SW trending targets have priority for further prospecting of the deposits. Saqez-Sardasht Goldfield, Zagros Orogen, Iran (by A. Almasi, M. Yousefi, E. J.M. Carranza) Manuscript submitted to Ore Geology Reviews 2 Prospectivity analysis of orogenic gold deposits in IntroductionFor mineral prospectivity mapping (MPM) of a deposit-type sought in an area, mathematical functions have been used to model spatial relationships between geological variables system of mineralization (e.g., Bonham-Carter, 1994;Luo and Dimitrakopoulos, 2003; Porwal et al., 2003a,b,c;Carranza, 2008Carranza, , 2017. In MPM, mathematical functions, have been widely used to assign weights to discretized spatial evidence values as fuzzified evidential maps in the [0,1] range or to rank target areas as fuzzy prospectivity models (e.g., Bonham-Carter, 1994;Carranza and Hale, 2002;Luo and Dimitrakopoulos, 2003;Porwal et al., 2003c;Carranza, 2008Carranza, , 2009Carranza, , 2017Lisitsin et al., 2013;Mutele et al., 2017;Nykänen et al., 2017). The weights assigned to classes of discretized evidential values may be based on (a) expert judgment directly, (b) locations of known mineral occurrences (KMOs), (c) a combination of (a) and (b), or (d) subjectively-defined functions, so indirectly-assigned by analyst (e.g., Luo, 1990;Bonham-Carter, 1994;Cheng and Agterberg, 1999;Luo and Dimitrakopoulos, 2003;Porwal et al., 2003a Porwal et al., ,b,c, 2004Porwal et al., , 2006Carranza et al., 2005;Carranza, 2008Carranza, , 2014Porwal and Kreuzer, 2010;Mejía-Herrera et al., 2014;Carranza and Laborte, 2016;McKay and Harris, 2016). All these methods impart bias due to discretization of continuous spatial values, use of subjective expert judgments, and sparse or incomplete data on locations of KMOs in knowledge-and data-driven MPM (Coolbaugh et al., 2007;Lusty et al., 2012;Ford et al., 2016).To reduce bias in the assignment of weights to continuous-value spatial evidence, various re...

The aim of this study is to map orogenic gold prospecting areas in the region of Saqez, NW of Iran. In order to achieve this task geological, geochemical and airborne geophysical data are analyzed and integrated using index overlay and fuzzy logic methods. Geological map of Saqez (1:100000 scale) is used to assign lithological weights based on their favorability for hosting orogenic Au mineralization. Also a fault density map is produced and assigned based on the structural map which is included in the geological map. For preparing geochemical evidence maps, data from 535 stream sediment samples are examined using Number-Size multifractal method for Au, As, Bi and Hg. The detected thresholds are used to assign the catchment basins of the stream sediment samples. Aeromagnetic data is employed to detect the edges of magnetic anomalies based on an enhanced edge detection method. Extracted lineaments are then converted to a density map and assigned properly. Airborne radiometric data is also used to produce two evidence maps. Potassium count grid independently and K/Th ratio map are employed to distinguish locations with hydrothermal activity. Finally after integrating evidence maps, new locations with high potentials of Au mineralization are identified considering that the gold indications of the study area (Qolqoleh, Kervian and Ghabaghloujeh) are placed in the first priority of the fuzzy logic prospectivity map.

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