The method of medium-scale mineralogical mapping during diamond searching: a case study in the Ygyatta Region (Western Yakutia)

Abstract

The analysis of mineralogical information has enabled the development of a novel mineralogical zoning method using GIS and statistics. The proposed method was applied to the Ygyatta Region located within the Yakut Diamond-bearing Province. A set of mineralogical characteristics was chosen to examine the information content and productivity of the terrigenous collectors, providing an exact identification of the development areas of the deposits and the locations of their primary sources during medium-scale forecasting. The developed GIS-integrated database of the mineralogical passports of mine workings was based on the identification of background and anomalous parameters in the mineralogical field. The latter, within the Ygyatta Region, was delineated using ModelBuilder. The proposed method demonstrates the ability to contour mineralogical taxa of the “node” and “section” ranks within the Ygyatta Region, leading to the identification of six mineralogical nodes and fifteen mineralogical sections. This method can be effective for medium-scale zoning, based on mineralogical data from other diamond-bearing areas.