Role of Petrology in Geologic Mapping

and Mineral Exploration

J. K. Aravind
Senior Geologist
Petrology Division
Geological Survey of India
Training Institute
Mission-V
 • What do you meant by Geological Mapping?
• What does it contains?
• What are the types of geological maps?
• What are the geological mapping programs
do GSI have?
• How the Geological Maps will be useful to
the Engineers (both drilling and vehicle) and
Geophysics (both instrumentation and
exploration)?

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 Geological Mapping

• Creates new geologic data

• Creates knowledge that contribute to earth information science
• From this data and knowledge, insights can be drawn now and in the
future.
• What was the challenges we are facing nowadays?
• The exposed mineral deposits are becoming more scarce than ever.
• Many future targets will likely be buried under post mineral rocks, or
occur at significant depth, or be in terranes with little previous
geologic investigation.

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 Challenges for Geological Mapping

• Exploration strategies of the future must adapt to meet

these challenges.
• Toward that end, geologic mapping provides new information
in real time so that the field geologist can construct or
upgrade geologic hypotheses for mineral occurrences.

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 Challenges for Geological Mapping

• Geological Mapping should address the following:

• How do we know?
• What do we do not know?

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 Mapping is about
practicing science in the field,
armed with trained eyes and
tools that allow us to observe, record,
and interpret nature by construction of
geologic maps

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 Geological maps become essential parts
of the geospatial genetic models of ore
formation that define and guide
exploration by delineating the most
prospective areas.

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 Way Forward for Geological Mapping

1. How geologic mapping provides many types of

information essential both in exploration and
mining?
2. To describe new digital mapping technology that
is beginning to pervade field methods instruction.
3. To possibly motivate renewed interest of a
computer-literate generation in mineral resource
mapping by providing powerful tools based on
information technology.

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 Why do we need Geological Maps?

1. Scientific methods rely upon observations that

must be recorded and organized so that they may
be interpreted and explained.
2. Geologic mapping should be designed to be the
most effective method of recording and
organizing geologic observations in the field.
3. Geologic maps are used as a means of presenting
the observations as well as constructing geologic
hypotheses.

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 Why do we need Geological Maps?

• In the so-called exact sciences, such as chemistry and

physics, observations are made through experiment and
the validity of the results depends upon how effectively
and completely the variables that bear on the
experiment are anticipated and controlled.
• In Geology, the experiment is already taken place in
nature, and the task for us (geologist, geophysicist,
engineer, etc.) is to identify the principal variables and
establish how these variables probably controlled the
results.

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 How the petrology helps in the
geological mapping?
• What processes resulted in the rock formation?
• How ore deposits formed with/within the rock formations?
• How these hydrothermal alterations controlled the ore
deposit formations?
• How do you utilize the petrology as a tool in geological
mapping and mineral exploration?
• How do we establish the variables (temperature, pressure,
density, viscosity, fluid composition, etc.) through the
petrology?

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 How the petrology helps in the
geological mapping?

• Petrology can also reveal about the later overprinting of

the ore deposits.
• Overprinting (by oxidation, leaching, enrichment, etc.)
• Overprinting by different processes (structural,
hydrothermal, surficial, etc.)
• How the paleo-climatic conditions/changes can be revealed
by petrology?

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 Geologic maps represent a
complex portrayal or melding
of both data and
interpretation

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 Geologic maps portray the shapes of
three-dimensional rock bodies and
structures that formed them over some
length of time. The ability to predict
what geology occurs at depth
i.e., the third dimension, is the key to
exploration

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 Why we are switching over
the geological mapping from
SGM/STM to
ITM/RMT/Uncover?

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 Because we need special maps
for unravelling the new
mineral deposits

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 Petrology

• Petrography
• Geochemistry
• Petrogenesis

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 Why we
should name
the rock?

Why we should
bother about the
chemistry rock?

Why we should
know about the
genesis of the
rock?
A Little learning is always a dangerous thing

• Enjoy Learning always and all the ways.

• Do wonders with your penetrative eyes and
lateral thinking.
Thank you