Sustainable Exploration with MUD® Locates New Gold Targets
Project Overview
Exploration companies confronted with countless financial, technical and operational challenges need cost-effective technology to detect precious and base-metal occurrences in increasingly challenging environments—including at depth, under cover and in remote regions. Technologies that expedite identification and modeling of feasible targets allow for informed decision making and a reduction in environmental impact.
Alerio Gold and Auracle worked collaboratively to use MUD® to produce new geological iinformation to refine and prioritize targets for Alerio's future exploration of its 1470-hectare Tassawini Gold Project, in Guyana. Heavily vegetated tropical rainforest dominates the landscape which creates a unique set of challenges for boots on the ground exploration.
The primary objective of this work was to add to the understanding of fracture networks and rock competency for future drilling programs and possible development, and to map apparent and non-apparent geological structures including faults, fractures, lineaments and shear zones--without impacting the surrounding ecosystem.
Guyana
Sector:
Exploration and Development
Service:
Geological Modeling of the Subsurface
Satellite:
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
The Tassawini Gold Project is an advanced stage gold project, totalling 3, 413 acres in size, located approximately 175 kilometers to the northwest of Georgetown, in Guyana, South America.
$34M in historical expenditures with mineralization open in several directions.
Solutions
New Targets
Auracle's MUD® Fracture Density Model, which views the subsurface, added 4 yet to be tested gold exploration target zones.
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2 extensions of the Tassawini and Sonne resources
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2 new target zones, identified as 1A and 1B.
Detection of Historical Mining
The MUD® system detected other subsurface probable historic mining zones previously unmapped and which are not seen at surface.
The historic zones are displayed in red. The resource extensions have become new target zones and are displayed in blue.
An anomaly zone (displayed in tan) was detected and requires further exploration.
Model of Bedrock Structure
Veins of minerals containing metals, including gold occupy faults and fractures in structurally complex zones.
Density within the newly detected target zones appears to have very high fracture and fault density as is also present in the Tassawini deposit.
These zones may be highly prospectivity due to the structure, fracture density and the evidence of historic artisanal gold mining.
Benefits
Using satellite images and machine learning, propsective targets were deepened and refined, especially important in remote and inaccessible areas.
With the added understanding of the subsurface geological structure, boots on the ground field work can be planned and focused, saving valuable resources, time and money.
