Anomaly identification in stream sediment geochemical studies using geostatistical estimation in Feizabad district, NE Iran

Determination of a suitable method for geochemical data interpolation in order to incorporate the spatial correlation and mapping of geochemical anomalies is one of the most important issues in minerals explorations. The possibility of analyze and spatial modeling in geochemical data can be achieved by geostatistical estimation. Estimators utilize the value of specified nodes based on an algorithm and estimates other nodes. Among estimation methods, Ordinary kriging (OK) is a reliable and most widely used method in this field. The main objective of this study is mapping of geochemical data using kriging method in Feizabad 1:100000 sheet located in north-east of Iran. To aim this purpose, in the first step, principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out to find the correlation between selected elements related to Au and Cu mineralization due to the best spatial correlation of these two elements in the second factor. Then, in order to illustrate the geochemical anomaly obtained by second factor using ordinary kriging method, variogram modeling and ellipsoid direction were accomplished in S-GeMS software. The comparative study between Cu; Au-Cu occurrences and geochemical anomalies in the study area demonstrate that kriging method has a powerful ability to interpolate data and mapping geochemical anomalies.