Particularities of 5-component magnetotelluric soundings application for mineral exploration

Abstract

In the application of electroprospecting for mineral exploration, there are few clearly observed trends based on the development of electroprospecting technologies, hardware, software and computer technologies aimed at: a) the increase of electroprospecting application in comparison with other EM methods; b) application of electroprospecting at all stages of the exploration cycle; c) the increase of application of induction electroprospecting methods and, first of all, these which are based on the study of the natural EM field of the Earth (NEMFE). A special role here is played by the method of Broadband Magnetovariational Profiling (BMVP). Three stages in the application of electroprospecting are quite clearly distinguished: a) exploration for new mining provinces according to the distribution of resistivity in the Earth's crust and upper mantle (the AusLAMP project, a revolutionary idea proposed by Australian scientists; deep MT, scale 1 : 5,000 000 – 1 : 1,000 000); b) exploration for large conductive ore bodies, areas with a prospecting survey square area of more than 100 km2 by airborne geophysics, for areas with smaller size - 5-component AMT on a scale of 1 : 200,000 – 1 : 50,000; c) detailization and support of drilling operations, mapping of veins and dikes - 5-component AMT on the scale 1 : 20,000 – 1 : 5,000 in complex areas with induction and geometric soundings using control source if Induced Polarization is an exploration factor.