Quantitative Prediction for Deep Mineral Exploration

On reviewing the characteristics of deep mineral exploration, this article elaborates on the necessity of employing quantitative prediction to reduce uncertainty. This is caused by complexity of mineral deposit formational environments and mineralization systems as increase of exploration depth and incompleteness of geo-information from limited direct observation. The authors wish to share the idea of “seeking difference” principle in addition to the “similar analogy” principle in deep mineral exploration, especially the focus is on the new ores in depth either in an area with discovered shallow mineral deposits or in new areas where there are no sufficient mineral deposit models to be compared. An on-going research project, involving Sn and Cu mineral deposit quantitative prediction in the Gejiu area of Yunnan Province, China, was briefly introduced to demonstrate how the “three-component” (geoanomaly-mineralization diversity-mineral deposit spectrum) theory and non-linear methods series in conjunction with advanced GIS technology, can be applied in multi-scale and multi-task deep mineral prospecting and quantitative mineral resource assessment.