Application of principal component analysis and spectrum-area fractal model to identify geochemical anomalies associated with vanadium mineralization in northeastern Jiangxi Province, South China

The Jiujiang region in the northeastern Jiangxi Province is known for hosting many black shale-type vanadium deposits, which are mainly hosted in the Cambrian Hetang Formation and Sinian Piyuancun Formation. In this paper, based on stream sediment data, principal component analysis (PCA) and spectrum–area (S–A) fractal modeling are used to identify geochemical anomalies associated with V mineralization. Firstly, a dataset containing 957 samples of stream sediments with 39 elements was processed using correlation analysis and cluster analysis to find out the closest V-related elements, and Ag and Cd were obtained. Secondly, the raster maps of V, Ag and Cd were created using multifractal inverse distance weighted (MIDW) interpolation method. PCA was then employed to combine the concentration values of V, Ag and Cd into one single variable representing the internal relationships among the three elements. Finally, S–A analysis was used to decompose the first component pattern obtained through PCA and to extract anomalies from the complex background. The results show that the known V deposits are located within the highly anomalous areas, which are corelated well with the distribution of black shales of the Hetang and Piyuancun formations. It is suggested that the northeastern part of Jiangxi Province potentially hosts undiscovered V deposits, and the identified anomalies could be further used to guide mineral exploration.Thematic collection: This article is part of the Applications of Innovations in Geochemical Data Analysis collection available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/applications-of-innovations-in-geochemical-data-analysis