Geologic diversity as a measure of mineral resources potential in India

Abstract

Recent studies on the association between geology and mineral resources using an input-process-output model have found that there is a linear relationship between geological diversity ( x) and mineral commodity diversity ( y) based on a standard regression equation which can be used to predict the expected number of mineral commodities in a region. A study for India shows that it has a poor linear relationship between geological diversity and mineral commodity diversity, the regression equation showing a poor R 2 of only 0.31 even after excluding three states with very low mineral diversity. The points for the Indian states plotted on a standard scatter diagram for the states of the USA, for four provinces of South Africa, for Zimbabwe and for New Zealand fall well below the 95% confidence limit of the regression line, indicating a fair likelihood of undiscovered mineral commodities in India.