FEASIBILITY OF MULTI-COMPONENT REFLECTION SEISMIC IMAGING FOR DIRECT TARGETING OF METALLIC MINERAL DEPOSITS#xD;

Potential of multicomponent seismic surveys for direct targeting of metallic mineral deposits through reflection and diffraction imaging are studied in this work. The study site is at an iron-oxide deposit site in central Sweden, which has recently undergone extensive exploration work due to the increased global demand for iron ores as well as rare earth elements (REEs) often associated with these deposits. The multicomponent survey consisted of 150 three-component (3C) recorders, connected to 10 Hz geophones with 10 m spacing. Alongside the 3C recording, a collocated broadband 1C MEMS (microelectromechanical systems)-based survey was also conducted at every 5 m receiver spacing. The seismic source was a broadband vertical-component vibrotruck, which generated three linear sweeps (2-200 Hz) at every 5 m. Given the low-fold of 3C dataset, we developed a processing workflow for P-P and S-S static corrections utilizing the high-fold 1C broadband dataset, which significantly improved the coherency of identified seismic features. We present the final unmigrated stacks, where vertical component data show clear P-wavefield images of the known iron-oxide mineralization and two sets of crosscutting reflections. From the horizontal components, we were able to identify S-wavefield reflections from the mineralization only in the transverse component data. Moreover, in the transverse component data, we also identified a strong S-wavefield diffraction signal possibly indicating a magnetite-rich skarn deposit never imaged before nor in the vertical component data. We demonstrate the value of multicomponent seismic technology for targeting large- and small-scale deposits, and their potential to become a frequent part of mineral exploration workflow.