Clay mapping in underground potash mines: An initial investigation into the use of corrected intensity terrestrial LiDAR data

摘要

This paper presents an initial investigation into using estimated reflectance, derived from raw terrestrial laser scanner intensity data, to model clay content within a potash mine. The mines of interest are located in the Prairie Evaporite Formation about 1 kilometre underground in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. It is shown that with an appropriate reflectance estimation process it is possible to produce consistent reflectance estimates over different distances and angles for a sylvinite deposit containing interbedded clays. The estimated reflectance values for different distinct regions were compared with assay results. If a linear relationship is assumed then R2 values ranging from 0.48 to 0.90 were observed. The higher R2 values ( above 0.86 ) were for SiO2, MgO, Al2O3, CaO, TiO2 and Fe2O3, which are indicative of increased clay content. This shows that there exists a possibility of using the estimated reflectance from a Riegl VZ-400 (operating at 1550 nm) to map clay mineral content in underground potash mines. More research needs to be conducted to determine if the relationships observed in this study are applicable on a larger regional scale.