TITLE:
Mineral Mapping and Mineralization Exploration of Epithermal Gold Deposit in Bijia Mountain, NW China, Using GF-5 and EMIT Data
AUTHORS:
Haoyang Qin, Shijie Li, Haiyang He, Xiaoyu Liu, Xu Sun
KEYWORDS:
Mineral Mapping, GF-5, EMIT, Spectral Feature Extraction, Epithermal Gold Deposit
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.16 No.11,
November
26,
2025
ABSTRACT: Spectral analysis technology can identify minerals and their compositions based on spectral absorption characteristics. With hyperspectral remote sensing data, alteration minerals mapping in the wild range could be used for mineral prospecting. However, whether hyperspectral data with low spatial resolution can be used in the exploration of small-scale deposits is worth discussing. The Bijia Mountain deposit is a small-scale epithermal gold deposit located in the Dahananhu island arc belt in northern China, which has great potential for porphyry and epithermal gold-copper deposit prospecting. The alteration minerals distribution on surface and core samples was analyzed with hyperspectral data (GF-5 and EMIT) and a spectrometer. The alteration minerals, as well as the composition of sericite and chlorite, were identified using a tool developed with Python programming based on the Tetracorder algorithm. The mapping result showed the alteration zones: advanced argillic alteration (alunite + pyrophyllite + kaolinite) in the core of the mine, argillic alteration (sericite + montmorillonite), and propylitization alteration (chlorite + calcite). The composition of sericite and chlorite and the connections between mineralization and alteration minerals were discussed with high-sulfur epithermal metallogenic theory in this paper.