Mineral exploration generates billions of dollars for the Canadian economy. Any tool that increases exploration or extraction efficiencies by 1-2% creates economic returns of tens of millions of dollars. Advancements in nanotechnologies now allow characterization of samples at unprecedented resolution. The mining industry represents an untapped opportunity in this field because it lags behind the material science and semiconductor industries in highresolution sample analysis.
The MDRU of UBC proposes to conduct a study at the Efemςukuru gold deposit, located 30 km southwest of Izmir, Turkey. Efemςukuru is an example of an ore deposit formed from convecting hot, metal-bearing fluids in an area with abundant faults. One of the key objectives of this project is to identify how the geometry of the faults in the surrounding area controlled the metal-bearing fluids responsible for gold mineralization.
The Biga Peninsula in NW Turkey is a very active copper and gold exploration district in the western segment of the Tehyan belt that contains important porphyry-type deposits (eg., Reko Diq, Skouris, Kisladag). Porphyry mineralization deposits are the largest source of copper in the world and the Halilağa porphyry copper-gold deposit is a good example of this type of deposit in Turkey. The geology in the Biga Peninsula has evidence of complex geodynamics processes with continental collision and post-collision episodes.
The proposed geological research project is collaboration between UBC and industry sponsors to evaluate the nature of metallic resources in NW Turkey. Undeveloped concentrations of gold, silver and copper occur in the study region; these occurrences are being actively explored by the partner organizations. In the interest of the partner companies this research project focuses on an area that completely covers mineral tenure licenses owned by the companies.
The research project undertaken by Fabien Rabayrol will consist of studying styles, distributions, ages and metal endowments of gold and copper deposits located along an east-west oriented belt in south-central Turkey from June to October, 2014.
Elida is a newly discovered copper porphyry prospect located in Central Peru. The overall copper reserves are unknown and cannot be estimated from field inspection alone. The proposed research by the intern is aimed at helping to solve this ‘puzzle’ by using and developing remote sensing (RS) and geographic information systems (GIS) techniques for this problem. RS and GIS will be used by the intern to map and interpret lithological, mineral units and structural features that aid in understanding the movement of copper in this deposit.
Currently, developing 3D pipeline GIS (Geographical Information System) with 3D data interoperability is not only highly required by pipeline industry but also essential for building 3D SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure). This project proposes a novel approach to develop a new 3D GIS Web Services framework and components that is suitable for 3D Pipeline GIS and 3D SDI. The specific objectives of the project are to:
1) Develop a new 3D GIS Web Services framework that is suitable for 3D pipeline GIS considering its data feature.
The main problem this internship project explores is the selection, conversion, and encoding of mathematical models that pertain to the finance industry for processing on available types of analog optimization processors. This research investigation aims to develop new algorithms and code that take advantage of an analog optimization process which acts as an "oracle" for a classical Turing Machine computer. This will be done by developing methods to translate a range of problems into the ideal form for currently available adiabatic annealing hardware.
Carbonate hosted hydrothermal ore deposits commonly develop narrow mineral alteration (i.e. visible) haloes, complicating exploration targeting. In contrast, hydrothermal modification of the country rock’s stable isotope composition usually extends far beyond visible alteration. Hence, stable isotope “mapping” is an effective tool to aid exploration for carbonate?hosted deposits. However, widespread utilization of stable isotope data has been hampered by its high cost and long turn-around times.
Features identification and extraction from remotely sensed (RS) image is an ongoing research endeavor and has wider applications. Traditionally it has been based on pixel-based image analysis which has proved to be inefficient and ineffective especially for very high resolution (VHR) data. More recently object-based image analysis (OBIA) has gained a wider recognition because of its potential for accurately extracting objects from RS data corresponding to real-world features.
