Kriging Interpolation for Evaluating the Mineral Resources of Cobalt-Rich Crusts on Magellan Seamounts
Minerals. 2018;8(9):374 DOI 10.3390/min8090374
LCC Subject Category: Science: Geology: Mineralogy
Country of publisher: Switzerland
Language of fulltext: English
Full-text formats available: PDF, HTML, XML
AUTHORS
Dewen Du
(Key Laboratory of Marine Sedimentology and Environmental Geology, First Institute of Oceanography, SOA (FIO), Qingdao 266061, China)
Shijuan Yan
(Key Laboratory of Marine Sedimentology and Environmental Geology, First Institute of Oceanography, SOA (FIO), Qingdao 266061, China)
Fengli Yang
(Key Laboratory of Marine Sedimentology and Environmental Geology, First Institute of Oceanography, SOA (FIO), Qingdao 266061, China)
Zhiwei Zhu
(Key Laboratory of Marine Sedimentology and Environmental Geology, First Institute of Oceanography, SOA (FIO), Qingdao 266061, China)
Qinglei Song
(Key Laboratory of Marine Sedimentology and Environmental Geology, First Institute of Oceanography, SOA (FIO), Qingdao 266061, China)
Gang Yang
(Key Laboratory of Marine Sedimentology and Environmental Geology, First Institute of Oceanography, SOA (FIO), Qingdao 266061, China)
EDITORIAL INFORMATION
Time From Submission to Publication: 11 weeks
Abstract | Full Text
The evaluation of mineral resources on seamounts by geostatistics faces two key challenges. First, the conventional distance/orientation- and the simple distance-based variogram functions used are ineffective at expressing the spatial self-correlation and continuity of cobalt-rich crust thicknesses on seamounts. Second, the sampling stations used for a single seamount are generally very sparsely distributed because of the high survey costs, which results in an insufficient number of information points for variogram fitting. Here, we present an alternative geostatistical method that uses distance/gradient- and distance/relative-depth-based variograms to process data collected from several neighboring seamounts, allowing the variogram fitting. The application example reported for the Magellan seamounts demonstrates the suitability of the method for evaluating the mineral resources of cobalt-rich crusts. The method could be effective also for the analysis of surface data obtained from mountain slopes on land (e.g., soil).