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Conceptual mineral exploration
D. I. Groves Guest Editor
a
a
Centre for Exploration Targeting, School of Earth and Geographical Sciences, University of Western
Australia , 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia
Published online: 16 Jan 2008.
To cite this article: D. I. Groves Guest Editor (2008) Conceptual mineral exploration, Australian Journal of Earth Sciences: An
International Geoscience Journal of the Geological Society of Australia, 55:1, 1-2, DOI: 10.1080/08120090701673310
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08120090701673310
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Conceptual mineral exploration
INTRODUCTION
Although there is currently a global mining boom, most
of the commodities produced are from mining of
mineral deposits discovered more than a decade ago.
The preceding hiatus in global demand for minerals
caused reduced exploration budgets, with an emphasis
on district-scale to near-mine (brownelds) exploration
rather than the province-scale (greenelds) exploration
required for ground acquisition as the rst stage of the
exploration-to-mining pipelines of the major mining
companies. The exploration maturity of known mineral
provinces progressively increases as exploration pro-
ceeds and the more obvious exposed ore deposits, or
those with an obvious geochemical and/or geophysical
signature, are discovered. The mineral explorer basic-
ally has two choices: (i) to explore relatively immature
terranes using proven methodologies which have been
successful in mineral provinces that are now mature;
or (ii) to explore the more mature provinces using a
more conceptual approach to targeting and, at the same
time, attempt to improve existing direct-detection
methodologies or design new ones with greater sensi-
tivity and/or depth penetration. The rst option com-
monly involves greater risk, as the terranes are often
immature due to factors such as political instability,
uncertain mining legislation or their wilderness value.
Thus, it is important to develop better conceptual
targeting strategies, so that greenelds exploration can
proceed effectively in relatively mature, low political-
risk mineral provinces to dene the brownelds ex-
ploration districts and world-class mineral deposits of
the future.
In this thematic issue, Hronsky & Groves in their
paper Science of targeting: denition, strategies, targeting
and performance measurement provide a succinct sum-
mary of the philosophy of exploration and strategies for
conceptual targeting. Conceptual targeting requires the
scientic assessment of all available relevant data on
the terranes to which it is to be applied. Most world-
class to giant ore deposits form via the effective
conjunction of efcient ore-forming processes, in suit-
able host-rocks and/or host environments, under opti-
mum physico-chemical conditions, in high-energy
systems, and in specic tectonic, structural and/or
magmatic environments. Thus, conceptual targeting
models require the integration of a wide variety of
parameters, or their proxies, derived from an extensive
range of geoscientic datasets. Fortunately, there are
now extensive primary digital databases available from
industry, government and academic sources from which
the relevant parameters or their proxies can be derived.
As a multicomponent spatial analysis of the parameters
is required, conceptual targeting, or prospectivity (en-
dowment) analysis, is normally carried out using
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) linked to rele-
vant database systems. Most of the papers that follow
Hronsky & Groves illustrate this type of scientic
approach to the assessment of the prospectivity of
relatively mature, data-rich terranes or to conceptual
targeting within them.
Ford & Blenkinsops Evaluating geological complexity
and complexity gradients as controls on copper miner-
alisation, Mt Isa Inlier follows up previous suggestions
that fractal analysis is useful to dene geological
complexity and complexity gradients which can deline-
ate the loci of circulating mineralising hydrothermal
uids and hence depositional sites of ore deposits. They
apply this approach to copper mineralisation in the Mt
Isa Inlier, Queensland. Nykanen, Groves, Ojala, Eilu &
Gardolls Reconnaissance-scale conceptual fuzzy-logic
prospectivity modelling for iron oxide copper gold depos-
its in the northern Fennoscandian Shield, Finland,
discusses a region where several new discoveries (or
rediscoveries) have been made in, and around, the
districts dened by their analysis.
The following three papers deal with GIS-based
prospectivity analysis for orogenic-gold deposits. Nyka-
nen, Groves, Ojala & Gardolls paper Combined con-
ceptual/empirical prospectivity mapping for orogenic
gold in the northern Fennoscandian Shield, Finland
involves combined geological, geophysical and geo-
chemical databases to assess prospectivity using a
fuzzy-logic approach. Bierlein, Northover, Groves, Gold-
farb & Marsh in their paper Controls on mineralisation
in the Sierra Foothills gold province, central California,
USA: a GIS-based reconnaissance prospectivity analysis
then describe a regional-scale GIS analysis in a rst
attempt to dene prospective districts for world-class
deposits. In a somewhat different approach, Bierlein,
Fraser, Brown & Lees paper Advanced methodologies
for the analysis of databases of mineral deposits and
major faults discusses prospectivity analysis of mineral
deposits and major faults (largely for orogenic-gold
deposits) using database interrogation and pattern
recognition software derived from the biological
sciences.
Australian Journal of Earth Sciences (2008) 55, (1 2)
ISSN 0812-0099 print/ISSN 1440-0952 online 2008 Geological Society of Australia
DOI: 10.1080/08120090701673310
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The nal paper Predictive targeting in Australian
orogenic-gold systems at the deposit to district scale
using numerical modelling by Potma, Roberts, Schaubs,
Sheldon, Zhang, Hobbs & Ord describes modern
computational simulations of hydrothermal uid ow
as a sophisticated methodology for predictive targeting
in data-rich mineral districts. They provide two
examples of this modelling methodology as applied
to orogenic-gold systems in Victoria and Western
Australia.
It is hoped that these examples of predictive explora-
tion targeting in a digital environment stimulate the use
of these methodologies in greenelds to brownelds
exploration worldwide. It is only by denition of the
most prospective terranes at the greenelds scale that
the mineral industry will be able to continue to discover
new mineral deposits and meet the expanding market
for those mineral commodities that fuel the booming
global economy.
D. I. GROVES
Guest Editor
Centre for Exploration Targeting,
School of Earth and Geographical Sciences,
University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley, WA 6009
Australia
2 D. I. Groves
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