Application of GeoDAS and other advanced GIS technologies for modeling stream sediment geochemical distribution patterns to assess gold resources potential in Yunnan Province, South China

Exploration of gold deposits for large areas is a great challenge. The Yunnan Province of South China hosts a few known gold deposits and has the potential for more. This work focuses on the application of some new and advanced GIS techniques primarily using the GeoDAS system for delineating prospective areas for gold deposits. Most of the processing and analysis has been done on the stream sediment geochemistry data. Methods such as inverse distance weighting, principal component analysis, multifractal analysis using S-A method and local singularity were applied to the geochemistry data to generate datasets related to gold mineralization. The datasets (evidence layers) were integrated using both the new fuzzy weights of evidence and ordinary weights of evidence methods to compare the outputs and create prediction maps for possibly two different types of gold deposits. These maps can be used to narrow down target areas for future exploration.