Brazil II: Follow-Up Stream Sediment and Soil Survey

Questions: 3, 4, 5, 6. Jonas Lasskogen, David Whitehead & Obasi Martin

Question 3a:
What do you expect the relative behaviour, i.e. mobility of Pb and Zn to be in this environment? The Zn and Pb in this environment will be dominantly controlled by clastic dispersion as the soils are derived from colluvium. The material will be locally derived and the anomalies will be close to their source. The local geology controls the pH which affects the dispersion of metals. Metals are more mobile under low pH conditions.

In areas of low relief, Zn and Pb is controlled more by hydromorphic dispersion and Zn will disperse further into the environment relative to Pb as it is more mobile.

Question 3b:
Briefly summarise what you can infer as to the possible location(s), size, shape and orientation of the source(s) of the anomalous Pb and Zn in this area. Anomalies derived from clastic dispersion should be small, derived from local source material and they should be highly anomalous values compared to the surrounding background values. Anomalies derived from hydromorphic dispersion are larger and the anomalies would show elevated values over a larger area with a smaller difference to the local background values.

Question 4a:
What values did you select to characterise the background (threshold) and anomalous values in your interpretation of the Zn and Pb (total) abundances based on your plots of the data in tables 32-A and 32-B? What significance do you attribute to each of the groupings? There is insufficient data for both soil and stream sediment samples to do statistics. Therefore a visual evaluation of threshold values was used. A value of 100ppm was selected as threshold for the soil samples. For the stream sediments only the distinct values above 200-300ppm were plotted as anomalous. This technique identifies the highly anomolous areas but does not take into account any other information such as regional threshold values.

Question 4b:
How many sources of anomalous Pb and Zn are indicated by the two follow-up surveys? Where are they; how large are they and what is their relative geochemical expression? If possible, classify them according to geochemical response and postulate their probable source area? There are maybe 4 Pb/Zn anomalies that can be located: one north of Corrigo PGBC with a possible source in the carbonate to the west of the anomaly; one in the northern part of the western N-S flowing stream which may have the same source as the other larger anomaly; A stream sediment anomaly (samples 13-15) which is close to two springs; Another anomaly with a source for Zn and Pb might be located in carbonate in the southern part of the western stream by samples 1 and 2. The anomalies look to be mainly controlled by clastic dispersion because of the topography.

Question 4c:
Rank the anomalies according to their significance, as you interpret them, and make your recommendations for further work, if any? Most significant anomaly: eastern stream in both soil and stream sediment surveys at least 1 km long, 200-500ppm for Zn and 200-700ppm for Pb. Western soil anomaly: most significant for Zn, less for Pb, 500m long. For this and the largest anomaly further soil sampling with a denser spacing, outcrop sampling to locate rock chemical anomalies, and resistivity geophysics could be applied. The southern soil sample anomaly is not in priority since it consists of only two samples. The least significant anomaly is that which is found by stream samples (13-15). Samples close to springs which means that (mixing of two different fluids, one of which has an unknown source). The anomalies are scattered and there are only 3. Small mineralization?

Question 5:
Assess the two techniques (stream sediment and base of slope sampling) used in this follow-up survey in terms of their relative cost effectiveness?
Stream Sediments
Number of samples collected. Number of days required. Number of crews. Area covered (km2). Number of analyses performed 42 1 2x2 About 4x2 km 2

Base of Slope
76 1 3x2 About 4x2 km 1

More base of slope samples can be collected by one team than stream sediment samples. The stream sediment samples are anlysed using two techniques. There is no significant difference in cost effectiveness between the two techniques but stream sediment sampling will collect more data because of the two analyses.

Question 6:
What are the main principles applicable to exploration that can be derived from this problem? It is important to establish the causes of element mobilisation in the environment; i.e. by hydromorphic or clastic dispersion and how this is affected by other factors such as relief and bedrock type;

You should look into account dispersion affects from man made sources, e.g. dams. These can significantly affect the anomaly patterns;
Once anomalies have been identified during sampling, they should be ranked based on factors such as their size, proximity to favourable geology and contrast to background values; Using different sampling media and analytial methods provides complimentary information which can be used to identify the most favourable areas for mineralisation.