Optical microscopy of metallic ores, based on the polarising reflected light microscope and initially known as mineragraphy, developed rapidly in the second half of the last century. It has become an indispensable tool for the study and beneficiation of mineral deposits and, in many cases, the technique par excellence for metallogenic research, to such an extent that the optical reflection microscope came to be known as the metallogenic microscope.

Compositional data arise naturally in several branches of science, including geology. In geochemistry, for example, these constrained data seem to occur typically, when one normalizes raw data or when one obtains the output from a constrained estimation procedure, such as parts per one, percentages, ppm, ppb, molar concentRations, etc.

The purpose of this book is to stimulate the reader ’ s interest in magmatic rocks and processes, to develop key skills of describing,
classifying and naming such rocks, and to show how much we can learn about igneous processes from careful, informed interpretation of rock textures, mineralogy and geochemistry. The book is aimed primarily at the intermediate - level student of geology who already has a basic knowledge of igneous rocks, but anyone starting from scratch should fi nd that the opening chapter and relevant boxes –together with the Glossary –provide the minimum introduction they require. The emphasis throughout the book will be on practical investigation, mainly by means of the polarizing microscope; basic mineral - identifi cation data have therefore been included to provide –between one set of covers –all that the student needs during a typical igneous practical class. <...>

GSLIB is the name of a directory containing the geostatistical software developed at Stanford. Generations of graduate students have contributed to

this constantly changing collection of programs, ideas, and utilities. Some of the :nost widely used public-domain geostatistical software [58, 62, 721 and many more in-house programs were initiated from GSLIB. It was decided to open the GSLIB directory to a wide audience, providing the source code to seed new developments, custom-made application tools, and, it is hoped, new theoretical advances <...>

This book is crafted against the backdrop of the commodities super-cycle that we had in the first decade of the 21st Century, and the mining industry having learnt severe lessons. Dr Ian Runge summarized the decade-long experiment with the prioritization of volumes and said, “The economics of mining is at an inflection point. For the last decade or so our focus has been on developing mines and bringing them into production. It is not production on its own that is important, it is how efficiently we can produce.”¹ The message was echoed by Ivan Glasberg, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Glencor at the time of penning this book: “The big guys really screwed up (during the super-cycle) by building too many mines”, and as a result he opined that miners needed to learn about supply and demand fundamentals. “The real trap in the gold industry in the past was chasing volume,” said Tom Palmer, Newmont CEO and, “No one made any real money,” according to Barrick Gold Corporation’s CEO, Mark Bristow. <...>

Geostatistics is a subset of statistics specialized in analysis and interpretation of geographically referenced data (Goovaerts, 1997; Webster and Oliver, 2001; Nielsen and Wendroth, 2003). In other words, geostatistics comprises statistical techniques that are adjusted to spatial data. Typical questions of interest to a geostatistician are:

how does a variable vary in space?

what controls its variation in space?

where to locate samples to describe its spatial variability?

how many samples are needed to represent its spatial variability?

what is a value of a variable at some new location?

what is the uncertainty of the estimate?

Геологоразведочная деятельность призвана обеспечить минерально-сырьевой базой горнодобывающую промышленность.
Геологоразведочные работы осуществляются поэтапно, в определенной последовательности, причем каждый этап имеет свои цели и свою методику достижения этих целей.

In terms of both volume and mass, waste dumps associated with large open pit mines are arguably the largest manmade structures on Earth. Their footprints typically exceed the aerial extent and their heights often rival the depths of the open pits from which the material used to construct them is derived.

Rocks in natural outcrops, in samples knocked off these outcrops and in drill cores, are beautiful and instructive. We can see different minerals, and identify many of them with the aid of a hand lens. We can also see some of the more obvious structures in the rocks. However, cutting a slice (section) through a rock with a diamond-impregnated circular saw and polishing the sawn surface shows us the various minerals alongside each other, rather than piled confusingly all around each other. This reveals the structure even more clearly, as can be seen in the polished facing slabs on many buildings and bench tops.