Document Type : Original Research Paper

Authors

• Babak Sohrabian ¹
• Erhan Tercan ²

¹ Urmia University of Technology

² Hacettepe University

Abstract

Mineral Resources have commonly been estimated through the kriging method that assigns weights to the samples based on variogram distance to the estimation point without considering their values.  More robust estimators such as spatial copulas are promising tools because they consider both distance and sample values in determining weights. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Gaussian copulas (GC) by estimating the copper grade values in the Sungun porphyry copper deposit located in Iran. Performance of the method was compared to ordinary kriging (OK) and indicator kriging (IK) by running the Jackknife test of cross-validation. The metrics used in measuring performance of the methods are global accuracy and precision of the distribution of the estimates, error statistics, and variability for globally accurate and precise estimates. The case study shows advantages of GC over OK and IK by producing globally accurate and precise estimates with acceptable error statistics and variability. 

Keywords

• Gaussian copula
• Indicator kriging
• Jackknife test
• Ordinary kriging
• Porphyry copper deposit

Main Subjects

• Geostatistics