Understanding Geology and Structure: An Essential Part of Mineral Resource Estimation

Abstract

The assumption of continuity of mineralisation between sampling points, as stated in the JORC Code, requires a "confident interpretation of the geological framework". The elements of relevance to a geological framework vary greatly depending on the commodity and style of mineralisation. In general terms, at least two elements must be considered to underpin a geological framework: space and time. The geometry and location of a mineralised body are controlled by physical and/or chemical elements, which can be unravelled by detailed geological mapping, adequate geochemical (including a quality analysis-quality control program) and structural interpretations, and by 3D geological modelling. These elements may involve, among other, aspects of stratigraphy, chemical or physical properties of the rocks (e.g. texture, grain size) and structural features such as faults, fractures and folds. Mineralisation events that lead to economic deposits are often relatively short-lived periods of focused fluid transfer and elementexchange, which result in mobilisation and deposition of metals in well-defined areas. Understanding the temporal framework and interaction of structural elements and mineralising events (determining genetic relationships, e.g. pre-, syn-and post-mineralisation) results in the development of more accurate geological models and can lead to predictive capabilities and new discoveries. We present case studies in regional metamorphic, igneous, sedimentary and surficial geological environments, demonstrating how understanding the mineralisation system not only results in increased confidence in the resource, but also facilitates reduction of exploration risks.

Subsurface Boundary Geometry Modeling: Applying Computational Physics, Computer Vision, and Signal Processing Techniques to Geoscience

“…An issue with the current approach is that it is somewhat biased toward single-target alignment. There is no incentive for a source component to overlap with multiple targets since stepping outside the boundary of a target incurs a negative penalty in (11). This usually deters any 'cross-over' unless the source component is large enough to encompass both targets and the targets are reasonably close together that reward outweighs penalty.…”

“…. to generate support for numerical simulations of complex phenomena (i.e., earthquakes, fluid transport) in which structures [11] play an important role." This is also true of subsurface models serving as decision support tools in mining and geological exploration.…”

“…This curvelet κ t k is then collectively mapped onto κ t+1 c , the current curvelet. 11 For a given point n, the sequence [κ t+1 c (n), κ t c (n), κ t−1 c (n), . .…”

“…This is because inconsistent (jittery) movement has a detrimental effect on trajectory estimation. To eliminate the cumulative effects of drifting which would otherwise skew the tracks over time, the associated point set is constrained to lie on a regularized curvelet as shown in Fig.12(f) 11. This provides an interesting contrast to the wavefront tracking approach proposed by Tomek et al[49] which represents two sets of time-stamped pixels with a complete oriented bipartite graph, poses the task of finding the best tracking arrows as a network flow problem, formulates and solves it as an integer program using branch and bound.…”

Mineralization Characterization of Psammitic Rocks in Efon-Alaaye and Environs using Remote Sensing and Field Studies

“…Remote sensing has been a versatile tool in geology for the understanding of regional mapping, structural interpretation and to aid prospecting of mineral deposits [6]. Understanding the geology and structure of a terrain plays an important role in mineral resource estimation, evaluation and exploration [7][8][9]. Structural mapping is the identification and characterization of structural expression and these structures includes faults, folds, joints and fractures.…”