Integrating Petrophysical, Lithogeochemical, and Mineralogical Data to Understand the Physical Properties of Altered Mafic and Ultramafic Rocks: Implications for Geophysical Exploration

Petrophysics is the link between geology and geophysics. Understanding the petrophysical properties of mafic and ultramafic rocks is particularly important as these rocks are often genetically and spatially related to gold and nickel mineral systems. Placing these rocks in their correct geological contexts is necessary but challenging: Alteration makes visual classification subjective, inconsistent, and uncertain. This research improves mineral exploration by demonstrating how best to integrate petrophysical, chemical, and mineralogical data to correctly and reliably characterise altered mafic and ultramafic rocks using numerical approaches. Samples from the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia were used to develop and illustrate these techniques.