Detection of Main Rock Type for Rare Earth Elements (REEs) Mineralization Using Staged Factor and Fractal Analysis in Gazestan Iron-Apatite Deposit, Central Iran

Gazestan magnetiteapatite deposit is located in Central Iran and Bafq region, which has been occurred in form of veins, veinlets, and small apatite lenses as well as magnetite in metasomatic rock types such as green chloriteactinolite rock units. These rocks are situated in the carbonatevolcanic complex of Upper PrecambrianLower Cambrian Rizo formation. In this study, staged factor analysis and ConcentrationNumber (CN) fractal model were used based on core samples for determination of main rock type for Rare Earth Elements (REEs) mineralization. Hence, after normalizing the data by staged factor analysis, the target factors were determined and the factorial map was generated using the CN fractal modeling. The results showed that the first factor of the sixth step (F16) is contained of the REEs with phosphorous. Afterwards, results obtained by the CN fractal method on the F16 indicated that there are five populations for REEs which are compared with different lithological units by evaluation matrix. The evaluation matrix confirmed the compliance of magnetiteapatite units with the high values of mineralization factor. The REEs were accumulated in magnetiteapatite units based on highest Overall Accuracy (OA).