Regional geochemical secondary negative anomalies and their significance

Abstract

Research involving secondary negative anomalies and their application in regional stream sediment surveys has been scarce. Conventionally, negative anomalous threshold values have been calculated in the same way as positive anomalous threshold values. But the conventional methods all have drawbacks which hinder their application. In this paper, we have chosen to delineate negative (and/or positive) anomalies using contrast values in order to overcome the drawbacks. Regional stream sediment surveys at a scale of 1 : 200 000 have been carried out in western Jungger, Shanxi, Kunlun, northwestern Jiangxi, and other areas in China. The geochemical data were processed using System RESMA. On the basis of the distribution of negative and positive single-element anomalies, three possible arrangements may occur: (1) negative anomalies accompanied by positive anomalies; (2) only positive anomalies occurring with no negative anomaly nearby; (3) only negative anomalies, with no positive anomaly nearby. These situations reflect different geological settings and different mineral forming processes. Basically, two different distribution patterns of regional negative anomalies in relation to the backgrounds — low background (LB) and high background (HB) —may be observed in different geological environments: (1) regional negative anomalies are distributed only around the positive anomalies in the LB area; (2) regional negative anomalies can exist on the periphery of positive anomalies in both LB and HB areas. Two kinds of patterns for regional multi-element negative and positive anomalies reflecting different geological processes have been noted: (1) coincident positive anomalies for one group of elements and negative anomalies for another group of associated elements can be used to uniquely define ore deposition; (2) regional positive multi-element anomalies of some elements (including ore and associated elements) occurring over a deposit are accompanied by negative anomalies on the periphery of the deposits. Two regional models of negative and positive anomalies are established for Au and Cu deposits. Integration of multi-element positive and negative composited geochemical anomalies are much more useful than positive anomalies or positive composited anomalies to delineate regional structures.