After thousands of years of mining, most people would agree that the “low hanging fruit” has already been picked. Apart from heading to new or underexplored areas, the use of new technology continues to be one of the best ways to make a big discovery.
Universities, governments, technology development companies, and even the mining majors are constantly investigating new ideas that can help explorers pinpoint commercial mineral bodies.
Thanks to ever increasing computing power, improved assaying techniques, and the adaption of ideas and technologies from other industries, explorers continue to lift the cover on major new discoveries. Here, The Assay looks at just some of the recent developments.
Drone LiDAR
Canadian gold and lithium explorer Joshua Gold Resources Inc. (OTCPK: JSHG) recently revealed it had received what it believed to be the very first government approval of mining survey results generated using drone-enabled LiDAR technology in the province of Ontario.
The eight-hour survey was undertaken at Joshua Gold Resources’ McCool property, a gold prospect located in northern Ontario and the results have now received approval by MENDM (Ministry of Energy, Northern Development and Mines).
LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, uses laser pulses to help generate precise, 3D information about the characteristics of the earth’s surface. It offers several advantages over other surveying methods, like the ability to penetrate tree canopy, making it extremely well suited to mineral exploration. Using LiDAR enables exploration teams to better assess surface features and plays a critical role in dictating the next steps in exploration.
Joshua Gold noted that until recently LiDAR surveying relied on human-operated flights by plane or helicopter, making it a costly and time-consuming exploration method. By harnessing advancements in drone technology, the cost of completing a LiDAR survey has been reduced by approximately 80%.
“This is a major step forward for JSHG, our partners, and the industry, and will enable more investment into property exploration.
“On top of the substantial savings, drone-operated LiDAR also produces higher resolution imaging versus human operated LiDAR flights. This is because drones can operate at much lower altitudes, thereby placing the scanning device several factors closer to the surface being surveyed,” the company stated.
Unveiling the ‘sweet spot’ for gold discovery
A Geoscience Australia-led team of researchers has made it easier for explorers to strike gold by uncovering previously unknown patterns in global geology that can be used to explore for gold deposits.
In findings published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, researchers from Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future programme, the University of Adelaide, and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) compared magnetotelluric data from across Australia, North and South America, and China, for the first time.
“Like a live wire detector, magnetotelluric instruments identify natural electric conductors in the Earth from tens to hundreds of kilometres beneath the Earth’s surface that are sometimes linked to copper, gold, and associated critical mineral deposits,” the Exploring for the Future programme’s senior science advisor, Dr Karol Czarnota, explained.
“Through this analysis, we’ve found that we can pinpoint areas for exploration by using statistics to look through the whole tectonic plate and identify which conductors have the greatest potential to be associated with mineral deposits.
“This is the first time we have identified statistically robust, global insights of this kind, which image the source regions of minerals deep in the crust and pinpoint favourable areas for exploration.”
“In short, our findings indicate there is a ‘sweet spot’ for gold discovery. This information will make it much easier for gold explorers to zoom in on new prospective ground. It could even be used to open new mineral provinces across Australia, sparking a modern-day gold rush.
“This information could also help find other vital resources such as copper, tellurium, antimony, and other critical minerals used in alloys and electrification,” she said.
Using artificial intelligence in the hunt for minerals
Privately owned US company VerAI Discoveries has developed an AI-based mineral asset generator, which it says is “disrupting” mineral exploration. The company says its systematic methodology increases the probability of success in discovering economic deposits by two orders of magnitude, shortening the targeting time from years to months and reducing the targeting costs by over 90%.
VerAI deploys a novel proprietary AI/ML Discovery Platform that detects concealed mineral deposits in underexplored covered terrains. Its platform utilizes tailor-made datasets relevant for the challenge of exploring undercover, to directly identify with high probability the location of economic mineral deposits. The platform works with different commodity styles and in different geological jurisdictions.
Heading into space to make new discoveries
Space tech start-up Fleet Space Technologies says its GeoSphere technology can speed-up exploration time by up to 100 times and minimizes requirement for a large environmental footprint.
Matt Pearson, co-founder of the company, says GeoSphere uses ambient noise tomography (ANT), small satellite connectivity edge-processing, and intelligent cloud processing to generate 3D subsurface models.
“GeoSphere is a first-of-its-kind system that combines wireless geodes, edge computing, and a constellation of low earth orbit (LEO) nanosatellites to discover critical resources up to 100 times faster than traditional methods. It also drastically reduces the requirement for environmentally damaging elements of existing surveyance practices such as the use of explosives, noise machines, and drilling. In this sense it is a passive, non-destructive technique to assess site viability for mineral and material deposits,” he said.
“Deposits of copper, nickel, cobalt, gold, and lithium, for example, which is used to create zero emissions car batteries, can now be discovered through a 50km2 grid of satellite-enabled geodes, which can be easily installed by small, local teams. These are hand-transportable sensors which dramatically reduces the logistics requirements for remote exploration projects. It also allows explorers to adapt their approach quickly without the need to dismantle and move heavy equipment.”
Each wireless, battery-operated geode contains a sophisticated processing unit, satellite transmitter, and a seismic sensor. The geodes use the principles of seismology to map the properties of the Earth’s subsurface from reflected seismic waves by recording ambient noise – a process known as ANT.
“Once sufficient ANT data is gathered, geodes partially process the raw information on site, reducing the data requirement for transmission – a practice known as ‘edge processing’ that significantly increases the speed of connectivity between internet of things (IoT) devices and allows more information to be sent while drawing significantly less power. This streamlined volume of data is securely pushed to Fleet Space’s existing network of low-power small satellites.
“The smallsat then automatically sends the information to ground stations, dramatically reducing the time required to process data. This in turn allows explorers to make informed decisions on areas of interest much faster than traditional methods. There is now no need to wait for devices to be collected, shipped, and unpacked to collect the data,” he said.
Already in use in Greenland
In Greenland, Greenfields Exploration utilized the technology to investigate a remote location one thousand miles away from the nearest town.
Greenfields engaged with Fleet to address two key challenges. Firstly, there were very little data existing in Greenland, according to the company. Greenfields also explores over a very wide search space of approximately 1,000km2. To make exploration viable, the company said it needed to narrow the search space very quickly.
The GeoSphere technology helped Greenfields address these challenges. Connectivity dramatically reduced the time it took for Greenfields to receive data from a survey. This makes for faster decision-making times, improving the narrowing down of search areas by an order of magnitude. Fleet’s Geosphere technology allowed Greenfields to access data within a week of placing geodes in the ground, versus 10 weeks using traditional mining methods. The partnership also significantly reduced costs – with total savings of one third versus more traditional methods.
New technologies and ideas, such as these, will continue to help explorers make discoveries, which will be particularly important in the hunt for critical metals in the new energy future.
