Three-Dimensional Imaging of Resistivity & Chargeability for Mineral Exploration

For the exploration of critical mineral deposits, systematic geoscientific surveys including geological mapping and geochemical analysis was conducted. Based on these geological settings, high magnetic anomaly was delineated by drone magnetic survey, that can be associated with ultramafic rock. For detailed subsurface structures, DC-IP survey was conducted over 5 survey lines to obtain 3D resistivity and chargeability distributions. In the inversion process, 3D chargeability was reconstructed by the inversion algorithm adopting structural similarity constraints between resistivity and chargeability. In the data processing stage, apparent chargeability curves are carefully examined to recalculate the total apparent chargeability to be used in the inversion. In the 3D inversion results, we could clearly define low resistivity and high chargeability anomaly and theses anomaly was further defined by magnetic susceptibility distribution from magnetic inversion. The anomaly location shows a very strong relationship with the assumed faults, which can be conduits for mineralization.

Summarizing all the geological and geophysical data, these faults are interpreted to be the main control of the mineralization and successive drilling program was designed to test the anomaly. From this procedure, we could show that joint interpretation strategy of geological and geophysical survey results is a very promising in pursuit of mineralization.