Decomposition of geochemical anomalies associated with Cu porphyry mineralization in Varzaghan district: Application of U-spatial statistics model

The selection of an appropriate method for separation of anomaly populations of stream sediment geochemical data is a challenging issue in regional exploration investigations, because the geochemical anomalies of stream sediment data exhibit complex anomalous patterns. The main purpose of this study is discretization of anomaly and background geochemical values using U-spatial statistics method as a window-based moving average technique with variable window radius in stream sediment samples of Varzaghan district, northwestern Iran. This method was applied for delineation of different geochemical populations of the mono-element geochemical signature. For generation of geochemical maps, Cu, Au, Mo and Bi elements due to genetic relationship to Cu porphyry mineralization in the study area have been selected. Eventually, for quantitative evaluation of the ability of the applied method to delineate reliable target areas, the Student’s t-values method based on the locations of already known Cu occurrences were carried out and the results demonstratethe acceptable spatial correlation.