Determination of Potential Mineralization Areas by Hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods in the Khoynehrud Region of East Azerbaijan

The diversity of exploration data and the cost of borehole drilling necessitate the use of a suitable integration method for the analysis of the data of the semi-detailed exploration stage. In this paper, two hybrid multi-criteria decision-making algorithms, namely CCSD-EDAS and CCSD-MARCOS, are introduced. The data of Khoynaroud exploration area, in East Azerbaijan province, has been used to investigate the performance of these algorithms. The spatial data layers used include four geochemical, two geophysical and two geological layers in an area of 1400×2100 meters. The integration results show that the map obtained from the CCSD-EDAS algorithm has samples with weights approximately close to each other and above, while in the CCSD-MARCOS algorithm, the samples have more reasonable weights. The R statistics of the permutation method also show the relative superiority of the results obtained of the CCSD-MARCOS algorithm. The integration results show four potential mineralization zones in the study area. Zones I and II have the possibility of copper-gold porphyry mineralization and Zones III and IV have the possibility of mineralization of quartz-gold veins. Zone I, with an area of 400 × 1200 meters, has been proposed as the best zone for drilling network design. Also, the use of these two hybrid methods, especially the CCSD-MARCOS hybrid multi-criteria decision-making method, for integrating the exploration data is the most important suggestion of this paper.