APPLICATION OF GEOSTATISTICS IN MINERAL EXPLORATION

Geochemical Exploration for gold often times fail to produce favorable results because pathfinders for the gold were not properly identified. In others, pathfinders could not be linked to the horst-geology, and so high potential deposits have remained unexploited. The target in this study is to test the effectiveness of geostatistical tools (multivariate statistics) in identifying index and pathfinder elements during exploration for a mineral deposit, especially when a bulk geochemical data is involved. Logarithmic transformation was implored for data stationarity and normality. Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were used for the pathfinders. Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) and Kriging were used in delineation of gold anomalous zones.