We will now get into the exploration targeting section of the talk and will start with Australia, down on the lower-right corner of the next figure.

This plan shows the EagleEye enhanced seismic tomography at 200 km depth.

It shows the metal mines as yellow dots and diamond mines as blue dots. The areas that I have researched over the last 25 years are within the yellow rectangles. We will now get into the exploration targeting section of the talk and will start with Australia, down on the lower-right corner.

2.    Exploration targeting – Yilgarn craton.

This plan shows the broad geology of Australia and the areas that I will be looking at with EagleEye enhanced exploration targeting. We will first look at the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia.

The Yilgarn is one of the world’s most prolific producers of gold, nickel aluminium, lithium and has large resources of iron, cobalt, vanadium, chromium, uranium, REE and PGE. It is Archaean and Proterozoic in age.

How can we find more of these gigantic, rich fields?

Nickel Exploration targeting at surface.

This plan shows nickel mines in the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia. How can we target new nickel mines?

When you plot the nickel mines and giant ring structures that I have observed in the Yilgarn Craton the nickel mines always occur on the eastern side of the ring structures. This is the active side of the ring structure. The Australian continent accreted on the eastern side through time. Thus, we need to recognise and use ring structures to properly target nickel mineralisation.

Exploration targeting using seismic tomography at 75 km depth.

This is a complicated seismic tomography plan and cross-section. It shows the area from the Indian Ocean to nearly the Western Australian border, about 1,500 km. The cross-section covers the same area and extends down to 300 km depth.

The cross-section clearly shows the sub vertical structures up which the mineralisation has come. The strongest structure is under the Norseman Wiluna mineralised trend.

The biggest difference between the research I am doing and the majority of the current research is the much larger scale which I look at the geology.

The little brownish cross-section in the centre right of the cross-section is the scale that most people examine to observe how mineralisation forms. At least this is the scale of most that is reported in the literature.

There is nothing wrong with this research as is seen in the blow up of the EagleEye enhanced section from Leonora to Gruyere. The flower structures and the antiform mineralisation traps are clearly seen. They are not clearly seen on the normal seismic section, so there is an EagleEye advantage even at the small scale.

However, these are only the very final traps for mineralisation coming up from deeper areas of Earth.

In terms of exploration targeting the larger plans will give larger targets along the favourable structures that are observed.

How do we define which structures are favourable?

This plan shows the seismic tomography plan at -75 km depth from Wiluna looking SE to Norseman at top-centre. The seismic section extends from the West Australian coast nearly to the West Australian border as in the previous section.

However, this view is from the north-west and looking SE. Both of these images were processed 5 years ago. I have made big improvements to EagleEye since then.

The prolific Wiluna-Norseman mineralised corridor is clearly seen on the surface with the mines plotted on it. It extends down to the base of the seismic tomography section at 250 km depth and is the largest vertical structure observed. This is not a coincidence and shows the value of EagleEye processing of the section.

None of this structural geology is seen with standard geophysical processing!

The exploration targeting effort in the Yilgarn, given this above information, would be to focus on the plan structural shear zones where they intersect the vertical structural shear zones. These are shown as the red ellipses. Their intersection with the eastern side of ring structures is also important.

This process will only get you into the general area.

Then you need to look at other Target Ranking Criteria that are used to hone in on your target.

Exploration targeting using seismic tomography at 300 km depth.

This plan shows the seismic tomography at 300 km depth. The brown colour represents slower seismic waves, possibly more altered, hotter lithologies and the grey blue colour represents faster waves, possibly cooler, less altered original cratonic material. Note that the whole area is part of the original cratonic mass. The colour changes are merely degrees of alteration by fluids from the core.

This exploration targeting regime (which has been used for greater than 30 years) is used to target the edges of this alteration.

This plan updates and refines that old technique. Using EagleEye enhancement, one can follow these alteration boundaries from the surface to the Outer Core. I have picked the 300 km depth because the boundaries seem clearer at this depth.

This boundary should be the highest P/T change area and would be the preferred site for mineral deposition. They are the areas within the orange shapes. EagleEye can define these areas much more clearly than current geophysical systems.

The lighter point areas within each colour regime are higher heat flow areas. So, one can target high heat flow areas within the brown or grey rock. Even if they don’t represent higher heat flows they are the local areas of highest P/T change. So, you would look all around these points.

It was noticed that many of the big mines occur on, or near, these light areas suggesting a connection.

This figure was optimised to define the high heat flow (white) areas. The orange circles represent targets.

The original of this plan was done in 2018 and since that time many of these areas have been pegged, often by my colleagues. Good examples of this is the Gruyere area and the recent pegging across the centre of the wheatbelt. All the big new deposits (stars), including Julimar, have been found since I first put out this this plan and they all lie within the orange enclosures.

So, even though it is a plan at 300 km depth the targets are realistic. Most have not been drilled. It also suggests that the movement of hot fluids and mineralisation is vertical at least up from 300 km depth.

The top right plan shows the heat sources at the Outer Core and their respective positions at the surface which confirms my conclusion that the superheated fluids travel vertically.

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