Development and future prospects of quantitative mineral assessment in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Mineral potential assessment at the Earth’s surface has been an important research for geoscientists around the world in the past five decades. The fundamental aspects of mineral assessment at different scales can be associated with the following tasks, e.g., mineral potential mapping and estimation of mineral resources. This paper summarized the history and development in terms of theories, methods technologies and software platforms for quantitative assessment of mineral resources in China, e.g. comprehensive information methodology, geological anomaly, three-component quantitative prediction method, 5P ore-finding area, integrated information assessment method, nonlinear process modeling and fractals, three dimensional mineral potential mapping, etc. At last, to discuss the future of quantitative mineral assessment in an era of big data including platform for 3D visualization, analysis and sharing, new methods and protocols for data cleaning, information enhancement, information integration, and uncertainties and multiple explanations of multi-information.© 2019 China Geology Editorial Office.

Keywords

• Quantitative mineral assessment
• Synthesis information
• Fractals
• Big data
• 3D Geological modeling
• Machine learning