Application of Three-Dimensional Direct Least Square Method for Ellipsoid Anisotropy Fitting Model of Highly Irregular Drill Hole Patterns

Abstract

Ellipsoid or geometric anisotropy is a widely used method in geostatistical analysis to obtain variograms with different ranges in different directions (azimuth) and relatively similar sill variance. Ellipsoid anisotropy is indispensable in mining when a resource geologist intends to understand the spatial continuity of variables related to any geological controls of the mineralization. For example, when dealing with mineralization related to tabular deposits, a porphyritic deposit with an irregular drill hole pattern (fan drilling), three-dimensional ellipsoid anisotropy is quite challenging to model. We assume that the variables’ spatial continuity is isotropic, and we model it using a three-dimensional omnidirectional variogram. However, if the actual spatial continuity of the variables has a three-dimensional anisotropy, then assuming a three-dimensional omnidirectional variogram will generate imprecise resource estimations. This study presents a new practical three-dimensional ellipsoid model-fitting method using a three-dimensional direct least square method. We investigated a zinc (Zn) dataset from thousands of irregular drill hole patterns from a porphyritic system associated with skarn orebodies for the case study.

Keywords

• ellipsoid anisotropy
• spatial continuity
• three-dimensional direct least square
• irregular drill hole
• zinc distribution