Mineral resource estimation for a gold placer type deposit in Cordón Baquedano mining district, Tierra del Fuego, Chile (54°S)
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Date
2024
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Abstract
Gold placers are a type of ore deposit whose genesis is related to different superficial processes, having variable characteristics and complex mechanisms of mineral concentrations. These deposits are often exploited by medium to small scale miners, where work is carried out with high geological uncertainty or without proper geological characterization. This represents a difficulty for mineral resource estimation; therefore, usually more simple geometric methods are employed. In Chile, the Cordón Baquedano Gold Mining District, located in the northern part of the Tierra del Fuego Island, has been a source of detrital gold of fluvial to alluvial origin for over a century, characterized by mostly small-scale mining. Some attempts of medium to large, industrialized mining have been made in the 1900's and 1980´s without success. Furthermore, the existing metallogenic models are over 30 years old, and do not represent the complexity of some of the deposits found in the district. For this reason, studying if a robust resource model can be built using detailed surface geological mapping and exploration pits with an updated metallogenic model is of interest. This research follows the common practices for mineral inventory estimation to create a resource model for the Mina Nueva Deposit, locating at the Cordón Baquedano Gold Mining District, using exploration pits data in a sparse regular grid. Mineralization and resource models are suggested using traditional and geostatistical methods. The results of this study indicate that the gold content in Mina Nueva Deposit varies from 8,070 to 10,730 troy ounces (tOz) using newly acquired dataset, and from 16,720 to 18,280 tOz for a database incorporating new and historical data. This indicates the high complexity and variability of results when estimating mineral resources within gold placer deposits.
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Tesis (Master of Science in Engineering)--Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2024.
Keywords
Gold Placer Deposits, Geostatistics, Resource Estimation, Sedimentary Deposits, Magallanes Basin, Southern Andes