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Uncertainty Visualisation of a 3D Geological Geometry Model and Its Application in GIS-Based Mineral Resource Assessment: A Case Study in Huayuan District, Northwestern Hunan Province, China

  • Special Issue on Digital Geosciences and Quantitative Exploration of Mineral Resources
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Abstract

This paper reports an application of uncertainty visualisation of a regional scale (1:50 000) 3D geological geometry model to be involved in GIS-based 3D mineral potential assessment of the Xiangxibei lead-zinc mineral concentration area in northwestern Hunan District, China. Three-dimensional (3D) geological modelling is a process of interpretation that combines a set of input measurements in geometry. Today, technology has become a necessary part of GIS-based deep prospecting. However, issues of sparse data and imperfect understanding exist in the process so that there are several uncertainties in 3D geological modelling. And these uncertainties are inevitably transmitted into the post-processing applications, such as model-based mineral resource assessment. Thus, in this paper, first, a big-data-based method was used to estimate the uncertainty of a 3D geological model; second, a group of expectations of geological geometry uncertainty were calculated and integrated into ore-bearing stratoisohypse modelling, which is one of the major favourable parameters of assessment for Lead-Zinc (Pb-Zn) deep prospectivity mapping in northwestern Hunan; and finally, prospecting targets were improved.

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Correspondence to Nan Li.

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Acknowledgments

This research is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41972311, 41672330), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2017YFC0601501), and the National Key Technology Research and Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2006BAB01A01). We thank Prof. Mark Jessell, Dr. Mark Lindsay, Evren Pakyuz-Charrier and Cangbai Li for their suggestions on methods for integrating uncertainty into 3D modelling. We also acknowledge that Geomodeller V3.4, MinExplorer V2.0, and CURE software were applied to address all of the experiments. The anonymous reviewers are also thanked for their constructive comments, which have helped improve this manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1434-y.

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Li, N., Li, C., Chu, W. et al. Uncertainty Visualisation of a 3D Geological Geometry Model and Its Application in GIS-Based Mineral Resource Assessment: A Case Study in Huayuan District, Northwestern Hunan Province, China. J. Earth Sci. 32, 358–369 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1434-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1434-y

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