EVALUATING MINERAL RESOURCES IN A NARROW VEIN-TYPE DEPOSIT

Rodrigo Ziga and Xavier Emery Department of Mining Engineering, University of Chile, Chile ALGES Laboratory, Advanced Mining Technology Center, University of Chile, Chile

ABSTRACT Currently, kriging and co-kriging are the most widespread geostatistical methods for quantifying mineral resources in ore deposits. Quite often, especially in Chile, these methods are applied to disseminated massive mineralisations, such as porphyry copper deposits, and so far there is little experience with vein-type deposits. This work aims at applying geostatistical estimation methods to a narrow gold-silver vein deposit. The available data consist of exploration drill hole samples in which the gold and silver grades have been assayed. Two approaches are tested: The first one consists of a direct modelling of the geometry of the vein (via indicator kriging) followed by a modelling of the gold and silver grade distributions within the vein. The second one is an indirect approach in which the variables of interest are the vein thickness and the metal accumulations measured along the drill holes. The difficulties of each approach are highlighted, in particular in what refers to the lack of statistical robustness caused by the skewed grade distributions and outlier data, variogram analysis and geometrical issues. The applicability of the models and methods is discussed in order to provide the mining industry with guidelines for evaluating complex vein-type mineralisations.

INTRODUCTION In the exploration stage, the mineral resources in a vein-type deposit can be roughly estimated by means of geometrical methods. Basically, these methods aim at projecting the available drill hole data according to the vein orientation and at defining the volume of influence of each data. The main limitation of such methods is the lack of description of the spatial distribution and continuity of mineral grades. The use of geostatistical methods overcomes this limitation but faces several difficulties: The long-tailed grade distributions and the presence of extremely high grades is usually a serious issue for variogram analysis, since outlying data provoke a lack of robustness in sample variograms. A partial solution to this consists in capping high grades The grades are often poorly structured (short ranges of correlation, high nugget effect) The narrowness of the vein complicates even more the calculation of variograms in the direction perpendicular to the vein.

In the scope of exploration sampling of a vein-type deposit, it is generally accepted that diamond drill holes are enough to characterise the geological continuity of the vein, but that care should be taken when studying the spatial distribution of mineral grades, because of the presence of a few extreme and very localised grades. To study the distribution of grades, it is recommended to use data from underground excavations [1] and to define the measured and indicated resources on the basis of such data and not only of diamond drill hole data [2]. In addition, according to the JORC code, one should have an adequate quality control of the sampling and estimation processes, so that geological and grade continuities are characterised suitably, especially near the boundary between indicated and inferred resources [3, 4]. Also, it is good practice to study the grade distribution in relation with the geological controls, especially structures and associated geological domains [5].

METHODOLOGY There are two main approaches to construct a resources model in a vein-type deposit: the direct and the indirect approach.

Direct Approach This approach consists of two steps: first, a modelling of the vein geometry; second, a modelling of the grade distribution within the vein. Regarding the first step, it is necessary to accurately estimate the orientation and the dimensions of the vein, keeping an adequate geological control to avoid misclassifications between vein and host rock [6]. Alternatively, the vein geometry can be defined by means of a cut-off criterion, e.g., by using indicator kriging or indicator simulation [7]. Some authors argue that the direct approach is preferable when there is a significant correlation between the vein thickness and the grades and when point-support grades have to be estimated [8], but that its advantages vanish when estimating block grades [9, 10].

Indirect Approach This approach has been widely applied to narrow vein-type deposits. It has been developed as an alternative to the geometrical methods mentioned in the introduction. The objective is to model the resources of the mineralised vein in two dimensions, by using the thickness and the accumulation as the variables of interest: The thickness is measured in the direction perpendicular to the plane that defines the (local) orientation of the vein. The accumulation is the product between the thickness and the mean grade within this thickness.

From a methodological point of view, it is more convenient to work with the accumulation instead of the mean grade, as the former is an additive variable (i.e., it can be averaged arithmetically on a block support), whereas the latter is not. Furthermore, the accumulation has a smoother distribution than the mean grade, because it is defined on a greater support.

The indirect method is suited to the evaluation of narrow vein-type deposits [11]. However, when the grade distribution is not too skewed and their variogram is moderately structured, the direct approach may lead to more accurate estimates than the indirect approach [12]. Some applications of the indirect approach use indicator kriging in order to separate the deposit into an extreme high-graded zone and the rest of the deposit [13]. Other applications [14, 15] introduce the thicknesses and accumulations associated with multiple cut-off grades, allowing the use of specific multivariate coregionalisation models between these variables. In any case, it is suggested to keep an adequate geological control and not to blindly trust on mathematical or computational methods [16, 17].

CASE STUDY

Presentation of the Data We avail a dataset from an exploration diamond drill hole campaign, consisting of 24,729 samples with a length of 0.5 m. Each sample has been assayed for gold and silver grades and is classified according to whether it belongs to the vein (code 1) or not (code 0); such a classification has been made on the basis of geological criteria. Table 1 presents the basic statistics of the overall dataset and of the subset of data belonging to the vein.
Table 1: Basic statistics of the available drill hole data All the data Gold grade N data Minimum [g/t] Maximum [g/t] Mean [g/t] Variance [g/t]2 Correlation 24,729 0.00 1,819.70 4.03 1,063.68 0.70 Silver grade 24,729 0.00 11,663.10 64.43 102,028.56 Data within the vein Gold grade 1,747 0.17 1819.70 50.93 12,513.3 0.64 Silver grade 1,747 2.80 11,663.10 731.42 927,512.0

One of the crucial aspects in the evaluation of the resources is to characterise the geometry of the mineralised vein, in particular, its orientation. In a projection onto the horizontal plane (Figure 1), one observes a break in the azimuth of this orientation, which allows us to distinguish a northern sector and a southern sector. In each sector, the vein can be approximated by a sub-vertical plane (Table 2).
Table 2: Principal plane of the vein Sector Azimuth Northern 13.65 Southern -4.00 Plunge 83.00 83.00

Figure 1: Plan view of the data located within the vein, showing the two sectors under consideration

Application of the Direct Approach In this case, the data under study (gold and silver grades) present highly skewed distributions, as the one shown in Figure 2 corresponding to the northern sector.

Figure 2: Histograms of assayed gold and silver grades (in g/t) within the vein in the northern sector

Owing to the outlying data and to the narrowness of the vein, sample variograms turn out to be quite erratic. Instead of traditional sample variograms, we preferred to use covariograms, which lead to more interpretable structures, especially along the direction perpendicular to the plane of the vein (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Calculation of sample variograms along the principal plane of the vein, and perpendicularly to this plane. Left: traditional sample variograms; right: variograms obtained via sample covariograms

The steps of the direct approach are the following: Divide the deposit into two sectors (northern and southern). In each sector - Create a grid following the orientation of the vein - Perform variogram analysis of the vein indicator data - Perform ordinary kriging of the vein indicator. For each block, the kriging estimate is interpreted as the probability that the block is contained in the vein. At this step, it is important to carefully design the kriging neighbourhood, so that is zero (or very close to zero) for the blocks located far from the vein data. To this end, the radius of the neighbourhood along the direction perpendicular to the vein has been set to 20 m, so as to avoid excessive extrapolation in this direction - Separate the dataset into two subsets: data within the vein, and data outside the vein - Perform a joint variogram analysis of the gold and silver grades within the vein, then perform co-kriging of these data to estimate each block as if it belonged to the vein. Denote by the estimated grades so obtained - Calculate the final grades as [18]: (1)

Calculate the tonnage and metal contents in the vein, assuming a rock density of 2.7 t/m3 (Table 3): Tonnage [t]= Pint Block dimension [m3] density [t/m3] Metal content [g] = Grade [g/t] Block dimension [m3] density [t/m3] (2) (3)

Table 3: Calculation of tonnages and metal contents (direct approach) Sector Northern Southern Total Tonnage [kt] 768.48 672.30 1,440.78 Silver metal [t] 519.29 310.01 829.30 Gold metal [t] 33.99 20.86 54.85

Application of the Indirect Approach In this approach, we estimate the vein thickness, gold and silver accumulations. The estimation is performed according to the following steps: For each sector, characterise the orientation of the principal plane of the vein. The plane is parameterised by an equation of the form ax + by + cz + d = 0. For each drill hole: - Select the first and last samples and determine the equation of the line supporting the drill hole - Find out the intersection point between the drill hole and the principal plane of the vein. This point will be assigned thickness and accumulation data - Determine the angle between the drill hole line and the direction perpendicular to the principal plane - Determine the measured thickness, gold and silver accumulations - Determine the actual thickness and accumulations by projection onto the direction perpendicular to the principal plane of the vein. This amounts to multiplying the measured thickness and accumulations by the cosine of the angle above determined. The histograms and basic statistics of the accumulation and thickness data so defined are presented in Figure 4 and Table 4.

Figure 4: Histograms of accumulation and thickness data

Table 4: Basic statistics for thickness and accumulation data Variable Silver accumulation [g/t*m] Gold accumulation [g/t*m] Thickness [m] N data 374 374 374 Minimum 2.199 0.074 0.21 Maximum 12,444.7 1,543.3 5.92 Mean 1,091.6 72.3 1.46 Variance 2,077,891 17,652.5 0.998

Rotate the principal plane of the vein so that the rotated plane has a constant x coordinate. This allows transforming the original (x,y,z) coordinates of the data points into coordinates (y,z) in a single vertical plane. This procedure is applied in both sectors, taking care that the two rotated planes remain adjacent. Considering the correlation coefficient between gold and silver accumulations (0.70) and between thickness and accumulations (0.52 for gold, 0.59 for silver), perform co-kriging of the three variables under study. Because no specific direction is identified in the variogram analysis stage, omnidirectional sample variograms are calculated and fitted with a linear model of coregionalisation, using a nugget effect and two nested spherical models. Cokriging is performed over blocks with size 2m 2m, leading to the results indicated in Table 5.
Table 5: Statistics of accumulations and thickness estimated by co-kriging Variable Silver accumulation [g/t*m] Gold accumulation [g/t*m] Thickness [m] N blocks 70,415 70,415 70,415 Minimum 22.32 2.62 0.36 Maximum 8,685.8 1,335.0 5.92 Mean 940.77 68.42 1.44 Variance 347,68 6,128.2 0.182

Calculate the recoverable resources (Table 6): Tonnage [t]= Block dimension [m2] thickness [m] density [t/m3] Metal content [g] = Accumulation [g/t*m] Block dimension [m2] density [t/m3] (4) (5)

Table 6: Calculation of tonnages and metal contents (indirect approach) Tonnage [kt] 1,095.19 Silver metal [t] 715.44 Gold metal [t] 52.03

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS In this work, we performed the evaluation of mineral resources in a narrow vein-type deposit by means of multivariate geostatistical methods, considering a direct and an indirect approach. Despite their difficult implementation, both approaches are applicable to model this kind of deposit. In the

deposit under study, the direct approach gives 30% more ore tonnage and 15% more silver tonnage than the direct approach, but almost the same gold tonnage. These differences are not so important if one considers the implementation issues of each approach that are recalled hereunder. The main drawbacks of the indirect approach correspond to geometric issues. Given that this approach reduces the problem to two dimensions, the modelling becomes complex when the vein cannot be identified with a plane, e.g., when it is highly curved or when it opens out into several parallel branches. In addition, when a high proportion of drill holes are sub-vertical, the calculation of the actual thicknesses and accumulations is approximate, because the measured thicknesses and accumulations must be projected onto a sub-horizontal direction (the perpendicular to the principal plane of the vein). Also, the application of the indirect approach (especially variogram analysis) requires a large number of drill holes, as each drill hole is converted into a single thickness and accumulation data. In contrast, the direct approach suffers from the presence of extremely high data values and from the narrowness of the vein. This leads to difficulties in the variogram analysis stage, in particular to characterise the spatial variability of grades along the direction perpendicular to the vein plane, and in the modelling of the vein, as one must not extrapolate too far from the vein data. The stationarity or quasi-stationarity assumption underlying ordinary kriging becomes questionable in the presence of a single vein, insofar as it supposes that the vein has the same prior probability of occurrence everywhere. The indirect approach attenuates these issues because it works in the plane of the vein (avoiding the dimension of narrow thickness) and uses regularised data (accumulations) instead of the original grade data. For these reasons, the indirect approach is recommended in a preliminary evaluation of a vein-type deposit. On the other hand, because it works in the three-dimensional space, the direct approach allows one to characterise complex vein geometries. This is an advantage for mine design purposes, where in some cases it could be convenient to mine different branches of the vein, something that is not described by the indirect approach. Future works include the use of conditional co-simulation instead of co-kriging, for all the variables under study (indicator and grades in the direct approach; thickness and accumulations in the indirect approach). This will be useful to define probability intervals on the tonnages and metal contents and to determine whether or not the differences in the estimates obtained with co-kriging (Tables 3 and 6) are really significant. Another avenue for future work is the recourse to transitive kriging [19, 20]. This approach is attractive for narrow vein-type deposits insofar as it allows a 3D modelling of the grades within the vein without requiring any stationarity assumption, and the structural tool (the so-called transitive covariogram) is generally better structured and easier to infer and to fit than the variogram, as it reflects not only the grade spatial continuity, but also the geometry of the vein.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research has been funded by the Chilean Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT), through FONDECYT Project n1090013. The authors acknowledge the

support of the Advanced Laboratory for Geostatistical Supercomputing (ALGES) and the Advanced Mining Technology Center (AMTC) at University of Chile.

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