The team of the Siberian School of Geosciences (SSG), Irkutsk National Research Technical University (INRTU), participates in field electrical exploration of lode gold in the north of the Khabarovsk Krai.
The research support of the survey is carried out within the agreement between the service geophysical company "Gelios" (a Skolkovo resident) and INRTU. LLC "Gelios" was founded and is headed by Yuri Davydenko, Associate Professor of INRTU, representative of the SSG Directorate. In the new field season, the main task is to detect sulphidization halos associated with the porphyry gold mineralization.
NSTU NETI laboratory "Simulation and data processing of knowledge-intensive technologies" headed by Professor Marina Persova helps to implement the project.
"The fund of easily discovered deposits in the world is mostly exhausted, while the need for solid minerals is constantly growing. The depletion of near-surface deposits requires searching, exploring, and developing blind deposits that do not rise to the surface. The geological study is very expensive and risky in terms of business, so geological exploration develops to become fundamentally more efficient and faster as well as less expensive. Therefore, it is becoming urgent to create new methods and technologies that allow obtaining geodata complex, high-quality processing and reasonable interpretation of it as well as fixing signs of ore content, and identifying promising zones inexpensively, quickly and under any conditions. This is what our development does. And as we can see by the current experience of our Irkutsk colleagues, it successfully does," commented Marina Persova, Professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics, NSTU NETI.
SSG INRTU geophysicists apply the technology of electromagnetic sounding and induced polarization. The methodology developed at INRTU allows building three-dimensional geoelectric models based on areal electrical exploration works. This method enables assessing the sites for the presence of lode gold.
Test survey is being carried out to register the electromagnetic field from a grounded cable using an induction sensor within the RPF grant No. 20-67-47037 "Methodological support and software for processing large volumes of data from electromagnetic sounding, geological exploration and UAV-magnetic exploration based on a comprehensive solution of three-dimensional inverse problems of ore geophysics". If a successful geological result is obtained, it will be possible to use a new UAV technology developed with the participation of the grant funds. The INRTU students proposed to transport the induction sensor and the measuring module using a drone.
"Our Novosibirsk colleagues are engaged in the data processing. They plan to build geoelectric sections and three-dimensional models that will assess the prospects of the sites for the presence of lode gold, " Yuri Davydenko said
The expedition started on August 30. The team has to work in difficult climatic and relief conditions. The height differences in the sections are up to 400 meters (the surveys are carried out in the mountain taiga area). There are also thickets of elderberry and rock glaciers on the site, which makes it difficult for the team to move along the route.