Separation of geochemical anomalies related to hydrothermal copper mineralization using staged factor analysis in Feizabad geological map

Stream sediment geochemistry is one of the widely used methods for mineral exploration in the preliminary exploration stages. The accurate processing of the stream sediment geochemical data is of critical undertaking. That is due to the possibility of missing some exploration targets in cases where proper interpretation techniques are not applied. In this research, to more accurately separate the geochemical anomalies of hydrothermal-related copper mineralization, e.g., copper-gold porphyry, vein, and IOCG types in the northern part of 1:100000 Feizabad sheet, the staged factor analysis method was used. In this method, in addition to eliminating possible interfering elements in calculations, the elements unrelated to the hydrothermal copper mineralization type were also excluded to obtain non-interfering factors or so-called clean factors. The obtained results showed that factors 1 and 2 in the fourth stage of staged factor analysis can be significant factors for the exploration of copper deposits in this region. To validate the results, by using the area-prediction diagram, the staged factor analysis results were compared with the conventional factor analysis method. The comparison of the two methods showed that the staged factor analysis method in factor 1 in 22% of the area of the region reveals 78% of hydrothermal copper occurrences, while factor 1 of the conventional method, in 25% of the area, reveals 75% of the known copper occurrences. Therefore, in the staged factor analysis method, the anomalies with a smaller area and more reliability in predicting of mineral occurrences, have been detected.