Exploration analysis and determining the relationship between mineralization and faults as a new exploration key in the Sirjan-Beshneh copper deposit

Sirjan-Beshneh copper deposit with 0.5 kilometer area is located in Kerman province 80 kilometers west of Sirjan city. The variety of exploration activities including remote-sensing, field traverses, geophysical explorations, surface explorations comprising surface sampling and geochemical analysis of 94 samples, drilling and surveying three trenches with sampling and analysis of six samples as well as drilling of eight deep exploration borehole with the total length of 414.5 meter, have been carried out in the metallic deposit. All faults in the region were mapped based on the remote-sensing and structural geology operations of the region. In the present research, all exploration activities carried out in the Beshneh copper deposit were analyzed through investigating their relationship with the faults in the region. To achieve this goal, various techniques including drawing rose-diagram of faults, processing of resistivity and chargeability data of rectangle survey and smoothed inversion of data for five dipole-dipole profiles, imaging isograde maps for the surface and trench samples as well as 3-D modeling of exploration boreholes assays of the region were employed. The results showed that locations of mineralization related to the fractures and faults present in the region since the trend of most mineralized veins is along the main faults. At the end, in order to complete the explorations of the previous stages to get a better recognition of the deposit, drilling of several new exploration boreholes was proposed based on all performed studies and integrating obtained results as an exploration key.