Introduction to the special issue: mineral prospectivity analysis and quantitative resource estimation

This introduction provides an overview of the history, present status, and future perspective of research in the fields of mineral prospectivity analysis and quantitative resource estimation. It also summarizes the papers included in the Special Issue. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Geology, geodynamics and orogenic gold prospectivity modelling of the Paleoproterozoic Kumasi Basin, Ghana, West Africa

This paper describes the geology and tectonics of the Paleoproterozoic Kumasi Basin, Ghana, West Africa, as applied to predictive mapping of prospectivity for orogenic gold mineral systems within the basin. The main objective of the study was to identify the most prospective ground for orogenic gold deposits within the Paleoproterozoic Kumasi Basin. A knowledge-driven, two-stage fuzzy inference system (FIS) was used for prospectivity modelling. The spatial proxies that served as input to the FIS were derived based on a conceptual model of gold mineral systems in the Kumasi Basin. As a first step, key components of the mineral system were predictively modelled using a Mamdani-type FIS. The second step involved combining the individual FIS outputs using a conjunction (product) operator to produce a continuous-scale prospectivity map. Using a cumulative area fuzzy favourability (CAFF) curve approach, this map was reclassified into a ternary prospectivity map divided into high-prospectivity, moderate-prospectivity and low-prospectivity areas, respectively. The spatial distribution of the known gold deposits within the study area relative to that of the prospective and non-prospective areas served as a means for evaluating the capture efficiency of our model. Approximately 99% of the known gold deposits and occurrences fall within high- and moderate-prospectivity areas that occupy 31% of the total study area. The high- and moderate-prospectivity areas illustrated by the prospectivity map are elongate features that are spatially coincident with areas of structural complexity along and reactivation during D4 of NE SW-striking D2 thrust faults and subsidiary structures, implying a strong structural control on gold mineralization in the Kumasi Basin. In conclusion, our FIS approach to mapping gold prospectivity, which was based entirely on the conceptual reasoning of expert geologists and ignored the spatial distribution of known gold deposits for prospectivity estimation, effectively captured the main mineralized trends. As such, this study also demonstrates the effectiveness of FIS in capturing the linguistic reasoning of expert knowledge by exploration geologists. In spite of using a large number of variables, the curse of dimensionality was precluded because no training data are required for parameter estimation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Textures, paragenesis and wall-rock alteration of lode-gold deposits in the Charters Towers district, north Queensland: implications for the conditions of ore formation

Ore deposits of the Charters Towers Goldfield (CTGF) are mainly hosted by fault-fill veins. Extensional (∼8% of all veins) and stockwork-like (∼3%) veins are less common and of little economic significance. Crosscutting relationships and published structural and geochronological data indicate a Late Silurian to Early Devonian timing of gold mineralization, coincident with regional shortening (D4) and I-type magmatism. Paragenetic relationships, which are uniform in veins everywhere within the CTGF, suggest that vein formation commenced with the deposition of large volumes of buck quartz (stage I), followed by buck and comb quartz, and significant pyrite and arsenopyrite precipitation (stage II). Gold was introduced during stage III, after earlier sphalerite and coincident with galena and chalcopyrite. Narrow, discontinuous calcite veins of stage IV mark the waning of gold-related hydrothermal activity or a later unrelated episode. Ore zones within the veins are everywhere composed of comb and/or gray quartz, calcite and/or ankerite and bands or clusters of fractured pyrite that are spatially associated with galena, sphalerite or chalcopyrite. Low-grade or barren vein sections, on the other hand, are mainly composed of milky buck quartz with little evidence for modification, overprinting or interaction with later fluids. Gold-related hydrothermal wall-rock alteration is symmetrically zoned, displaying proximal sericite–ankerite and distal epidote–chlorite–hematite assemblages that may be taken to imply wall-rock interaction with near neutral fluids (pH 5–6). Isocon plots assuming immobile Al, P, Ti, Y and Zr consistently indicate As, K, Pb, S and Zn enrichment and Na, Si and Sr depletion in altered wall-rock specimens relative to the least altered rocks. Alteration assemblages, quartz textures, fault rocks and published fluid inclusion and stable isotope data imply that the veins were formed under conditions of episodic fluid overpressuring (∼0.9–3.8 kbar), at a depth of ∼7 km and a temperature of ∼310°C. The published fluid inclusion data also imply that gold precipitation may have been brought about by fluid mixing. However, physi- and chemisorption of gold complexes onto sulfide surfaces may have been important depositional processes and controls on gold enrichment at the millimeter to centimeter scale, given that most gold particles are attached to the surfaces of pyrite crystals of stage II or to etch-pits and fracture surfaces within the earlier pyrite