Mineral ecology and network analysis of chromium, platinum, gold and palladium

Abstract

Data collected on the location of mineral species and related minerals from the field have many great uses from mineral exploration to mineral analysis. Such data is useful for further exploration and discovery of other minerals as well as exploring relationships that were not as obvious even to a trained mineralogist. Two fields of mineral analysis are examined in the paper, namely mineral ecology and mineral network analysis through mineral co-existence. Mineral ecology explores spatial distribution and diversity of the earth’s minerals. Mineral network analysis uses mathematical functions to visualize and graph mineral relationships. Several functions such as the finite Zipf-Mandelbrot (fZM), chord diagrams and mineral network diagrams, processed data and provided information on the estimation of minerals at different localities and interrelationships between chromium, platinum, gold and palladium-bearing minerals. The results obtained are important in highlighting several connections that could prove useful in mineral exploration. The main objective of the study is to provide any insight into the relationship among chromium, platinum, palladium and gold that could prove useful in mapping out potential locations of either mineral in the future. With more open data repositories available, more research could be done to further highlight the importance of mineral ecology and network analysis in mineral exploration. Such a research is important in paving the way for data driven discovery on the field of geology by making use of the vast amount of data currently available. Mineral ecology and network analysis currently face a hindrance, because of more crucial data being held for proprietary reasons that tend to profit from its exclusivity.