Conventional Geochemical Exploration Method And Its Practices In West Junggar,NW China

The Central Asian Orogenic Belt?CAOB?is an interesting area for geologist due to its geological background which shows the huge potential for mineral resources.The study area of West Junggar Basin located within the CAOB is known for being rich in hydrothermal gold deposit even though it undergoes minimum exploration,and it is hypothesized that this area can host many deposit if the mineral exploration methods are reinforced.The current study focuses on the application of lithogeochemical exploration method in order to delineate anomalies of As,Au,Cr,Cu,Hg and Ni elements from West Junggar,Xinjiang,NW China.The original data were non normal distribution,so the log-transformation which is the popular method to normalize geochemical data was used to convert original data into a log space for obtaining a normal distribution.Quantile-Quantile plot?Q-Q plot?method was also applied to study the normality distribution of datasets after log-transformation,and the data found to be almost aligned on mean straight line.Kriging interpolation between data points was necessarily applied to construct contours and surfaces in order to determine spatial variations and anomalies within lithogeochemical datasets.The background?median?and threshold(95^th percentile)values were statistically calculated,and separated from anomalous concentrations before applying geostatistical analyst method for displaying the findings on potential mineral map.Kriging interpolation method successfully identified the anomalies of the As,Au,Cr,Cu,Hg and Ni elements.Moreover,the high anomaly concentrations of these elements were found to be mainly controlled by main faults as well as their related secondary faults,which facilitate the easy flow of hydrothermal fluids towards the surface resulting into the formation of anomalies.Based on the concentration properties,the cluster technique has been applied to determine the association between elements within study area and found 4 groups of element associations:Group 1 contains Bi and W;group 2 contains Ag,As,Au,Hg,Pb,Sb and Sn;group 3 contains Cr and Ni;group 4 contains Co,Cu,Mo and Zn.Based on these association groups of elements and anomaly distribution,the As and Hg may be considered as Au pathfinder elements.