Data compilation of the historic Dominique tin Property

1. Mapping Support:
Diamond Drillhole Data
Preparation and Display
Dominique Property, Yarmouth County.
BY: RYAN LEACH

2. Purpose:
 The purpose of this project was to gather, compile, and visualize
historic data in 3D
 Once data was collected and compiled a 3D resource model was
to be constructed showing the shape and size of mineralized zones
 Once work began it became clear that both the quantity and
quality of data that was readily available was insufficient to
complete my task as originally planned
 Became evident that a geodatabase needed to be constructed
and populated before project could move forward
 Project evolved into a data collection, digitization, and compilation
exercise

3. Location of Dominique Property
43.82˚N, -66.02˚W

4. Location:
Property consists of 37 mineral
claims, held in four licences by
John Wightman
Located about 7 kilometres East
of the town of Yarmouth
Situated on NTS 20O/16A map
sheet
Property straddles NAD83 Zones
19 and 20
Paved roads cross the property
and give excellent access

5. Background:
 Tin, Indium, and base metal prospect within the Meguma Group
metasediments.
 Property originally explored by Shell Canada Resources (late 1970’s)
 Encouraging results, but a larger deposit found near East Kemptville
diverted their attention
 In 1991 Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources drilled 4 holes
 Votix Corporation Limited staked the ground in 1997 to investigate
the Indium, Tin, and Zinc potential
 Votix compiled and reviewed previous work and drilled 3 holes
 Results by the work done by Votix were also encouarging

6. Background Cont.
 In 2005 the property was staked by John Wightman
 Work carried out by Wightman includes:
 Prospecting
 Ground Magnetic Survey
 MMI soil geochemistry
 Gravity survey
 Geophysics surveys highlighted some other areas of interest
 Anomalous values of tin and indium were found by Shell and
confirmed by follow up work performed by Nova Scotia Department
of Natural Resources and Votix Corporation
 In total 80 holes were drilled

7. Where to start:
 To begin the project I was not handed any data or .shp files
 First step was to research the property and read through technical
reports
 Technical reports of properties/projects often submitted to the
government as assessment work
 NovaScan is the province of Nova Scotia’s website for searching
their database for revelant reports
 Search conducted for “Dominique “ on Nova Scan produced some
useful reports
 Reports often discuss history, background, data, findings, and
recommendations

8. O’Sullivan Report (2008):
 Report written by John O’Sullivan (P.Eng) in 2008 at the request of
John Wightman
 Report includes various maps, cross-sections, and interpretation
 Many of the maps and cross-sections contained in the report
needed to be digitized to make use of them

9. Property Scale Plan Map:
 Due to the historic nature of this property the drill hole
locations are not known
 In the 1970’s the holes were drilled in relation to a local
grid
 Location of local grid is not known with any great level
of accuracy
 This plan map needed to be georeferenced and then
all the points(drillhole locations) and lines (local grid)
needed to be digitized

10. Local Grid:
 Due to the fact that the
local grid is simply a series
of cut lines through the
forest after a few years it
grows over and is very
difficult to find
 Drillhole locations given in
reference to local grid
and not real world
coordinates
 Have to assume that
O’Sullivan had the grid in
the right area

11. Georeference map image:
 Image was georeferenced into
NAD83 Zone 20
 Control points used were road
intersections from the road
network downloaded from the
government of Nova Scotia
 Total RMS error of 10.282 metres
 Overall, I am fairly confident
with the position of the
georeferenced image.

12. Digitizing Drillhole Collars and Grid:
 Feature classes were
created for both the
drillhole collars and the
local grid
 Drillholes are a point feature
class and the grid is a line
feature class
 Completed simply by
tracing over top of the
feature of interest

13. Drillhole Feature Class:
 Sample of the drillhole feature class
attribute table
 DDH_ID is the unique hole number
assigned to each hole
 Dip is the angle of the hole from
horizontal (surface)
 Azimuth is the direction of the
drillhole
 POINT_X and POINT_Y are the
coordinates of each digitized hole
collar in NAD83 zone 20
 Elevation is the vertical distance
from Mean Sea Level
 Depth is the linear length of the hole

14. Drillhole Data Issues:
 Received a set of drillhole logs, but
they were in .DH2 format
 This is an old DOS format for a
program called BoreSurv
 The drill logs could not be opened,
so a lot of assumptions needed to
be made about the drillholes
 Dips assumed to be 45 (big
assumption)
 Azimuth was measured off a plan
map from the drillhole trace using
a protractor (Could be accuracy
issues)
 Elevation is assumed to be zero
(not detrimental to project)
 Depths are not known

15. Implications of DrillHole Data Issues:
 Due to the assumptions made about the drillholes the data created
is not accurate or necessarily valid
 Even without any actual downhole data (ie. lithologies, assay results,
downhole surveys, etc.) I can not be sure about the spatial
relationships between the various drillholes
 If I had great confidence in the drill collar locations, and if I had not
of made such big assumptions regarding the attribute data it would
still be impossible to build a 3D model because the vital data is
contained within the drill logs which cannot be opened

16. More Data Issues:
 I was supplied with this excel file
which contains most of the assay
data for the historical Shell holes
and the Votix holes, but the data
is missing one key element
 Without a “from” and “to” for
each sample (where it occurs in
the hole) it is impossible to use
 Since I can not relate this data
spatially to the drillhole it is
unusable
 In absence of this data one
cannot determine where the
anomalous values occur and
how they relate to one another

17. MapInfo Drillhole Project:
 Drillhole Project Setup Wizard  Point to the collar table and match
attributes

18. MapInfo Drillhole Project cont.
 Link to downhole data (logs, assays,
surveys, etc)
 Create a section table for cross-sections

19. Create Cross-Sections in MapInfo:
 To create a cross-section you first
need to make the cosmetic layer
editable
 Draw a line on a plan map where
you want your section to be
 Select that line and click the
drillhole menu dropdown, then
“Define new section or plan”, and
in the wizard name the section
and click generate
 The section gets added to your
drillhole project and is accessible
through the section manager

20. Cross-Sections:
 Created a series of 15
cross sections covering
the Shell grid
 Without any downhole
data the hole trace is just
a black line
 Cannot perform any
interpretation without at
least lithology and assay
data

21. View Drillholes in 3D:

22. Example Section (MapInfo Tutorial):
 Section with data displayed  Same section zoomed in

23. View Sections in 3D:

24. Create a 3D object:
 3D solid generator tool
creates a 3D solid surface
from the section boundaries
 Boundary lines are created
by the person performing
the interpolation

25. Creating a Voxel Block Model:

26. Block Model Using Magnetic
Susceptibility Data:

27. Clipping Block Model:

28. Chair Clipping:

29. Threshold Voxel Model:
Displaying data within a specified range

30. Creating an Isosurface:
Combines cells within a threshold into a smooth surface

31. View Voxel with Other Objects:

32. References:
 Baldwin, A.B. (1985), Dominique Tin Project, Yarmouth Nova Scotia,
Canada, Retrived from
http://gis4.natr.gov.ns.ca/novascan/DocumentQuery.faces
 Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, Mineral Resources
Branch (2000), DP ME 009, Version2, 2000, Claim Reference Map
Grid, Nova Scotia, Retrieved from
http://novascotia.ca/natr/meb/download/dp009.asp
 O’Sullivan, John (2008), A Review of Mineral Potential and Work
Carried out 2007, Retrieved from
http://gis4.natr.gov.ns.ca/novascan/DocumentQuery.faces
 Pitney Bowes Software (2012), Encom Discover 3D 2012 Tutorials

33. Questions???