JOUR.GEOL.SOC.INDIA, VOL.

67, APRIL 2006

A GEOSTATISTICAL APPROACH TO RESOURCE EVALUATION OF
KALTA IRON ORE DEPOSIT, SUNDERGARH DISTRICT, ORISSA by
B.C. Sarkar and Indranil Roy. Jour. Geol. Soc. India, v.65(5), pp.553-561.
Shakeel Ahmed, National Geophysical Research Institute,
Hyderabad 500 007; Email: shakeelahmed@
ngri.res.in; comments:
At the outset I must congratulate the authors of the article
and the Journal of the Geological Society of India, for
publishing the article in geostatistics which is the state of
art technology in estimation methods.
1. Case histories are a must as they alone prove the
efficacy of a method and make a method/model
developed by the theoreticians, acceptable by the
practitioners. In fact, not many articles on the practical
geostatistics and on case histories of Indian mineral
deposits, are forthcoming. Hence the authors deserve
praise for their attempt to model Kalta iron ore deposit
geostatistically.
2. The authors have successfully fitted with three
parameters, log-normal distribution fit (p.560). Then,
why they could not have adopted log-normal kriging,
requires to be elaborated, as the same is not clear in
the text. After all, if the grades are distributed log-
normally, log-normal kriging is better estimator than
ordinary kriging.
3. It is stated (p.560) that Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP)
estimated by polygonal and cross-sectional methods
an indicated reserve of 72.13 million tonnes. How many
blocks of size 50 m x 50 m x 50 m, estimated (taking a
cut-off grade of 57% Fe) which were estimated as waste
i.e. below 57% of Fe, have been estimated as ore i.e.
the estimates are greater than 57% Fe due to kriging,
by you?
4. It is stated (p.560) that the computed marginal increase
in tonnage may be due to precise overlying of blocks
on each of the level plans that considers the marginal
ores. This statement is not clear and requires
clarification.
5. It is stated that in Kalta there are many ore types. By
what precise method of calculation, the average specific
gravity of 4.21 has been arrived at?
6. It is stated (p.560) that the ore inventory and
associated grade tonnage relations can be further
refined by using a map of variation in specific gravity,
which itself can be considered as a regional variable.
Normally, each ore is assigned a particular specific
gravity, as the variation of specific gravity in the same
ore type is more or less constant. Alternatively, even if
variation is there, it is negligible. Whereas the grade of
the variables like Fe vary even in the same ore types.
Therefore, the density variation can be considered more
as a mosaic rather than a regionalized variable in a
strict sense.
7. The authors have drawan grade tonnage curves
(Fig.6, p.560) based on the kriged estimates of blocks
of size 50 m x 50 m x 10 m. There are two types of
curves namely (i) cut-off grade (%Fe) vs tonnage of
ore and (ii) cut-off grade (%Fe) vs average grade (%Fe)
in the diagram. The second diagram is also called grade-
mean curve. The authors have drawn it for one
particular bench (715 mRL). For drawing curve of local
recoverable reserves, disjunctive kriging (DK), which
is also a non-linear geostatistical method is better
suited. The technique of DK can be used both for
kriging block by block and also calculate the
recoverable reserves bench by bench. Murthy (1989)
applied DK technique for an Indian iron ore deposit.
I presume that the authors are aware of this.
8. It is very well known that each block estimate is
542 DISCUSSION
JOUR.GEOL.SOC.INDIA, VOL.67, APRIL 2006
associated with an error. This is called the effect of
information. Therefore drawing of the grade tonnage
curves based on block kriged estimates are not correct.
Matheron (1978, 1983) developed an exclusive
methodology called non-linear geostatistics. This is
called the support effect. In fact, change of support,
developed by Matheron (1978) is the greatest
contribution to geostatistics, which classical statistical
methods cannot give. Rivoirard (1994), Subrahmanyam
and Pandalai (2000), dealt with these aspects. Practical
examples of non-linear geostatistical methods on Indian
ores were given by Murthy (1993, 1994, 1997).
Surprisingly there was not a single reference to non-
linear geostatistical methods in the article. It is
presumed that the authors are conversant with non-
linear geostatistical methods. I presume that, the authors
are aware that, be it linear geostatistics, non-linear
geostatistics or non-stationary geostatistics, the ideas
belong to Matheron. In their references, there was not
a mention of even a single reference of Matheron, who
is the father of geostatistics.
9. For drawing the grade tonnage curves for the blocks,
the steps involved are: (i) taking the original data, (ii)
regularizing the semi-punctual data over the bench
height, (iii) anamorphose the data and calculating the
anamorphose function, (iv) the inverse of the
cumulative histogram gives the grade tonnage curves
valid for semi-punctual samples over the bench height,
(v) correction for change of support is made on the
anamorphose function for the required block size, (vi)
the inverse histogram of different block sizes, the grade
tonnage curves could be got. This is explained in
Murthy (1993).
10. Readers are referred to Figs.1 and 2 of Murthy (1993),
which present cut-off grade vs mean recovered grade
in respect of Fe and SiO2, respectively of Bailadila
11-C deposit. There are a total of five grade tonnage
curves based on experimental sample values which are
nothing but regularized semi-punctual samples, kriged
values of 100 m x 100 m x 12 m blocks, curves with
change of support using non-linear geostatistical
techniques developed by Matheron (1978). The block
size are taken namely (i) 100 m x 100 m x 12 m, (ii) 25
m x 25 m x 12 m and (iii) 5 m x 2 m x 12 m. One can
clearly see the departure of the curves of kriged values
from the change of support for the blocks of the same
size. The conclusion is grade tonnage curves based on
kriged values give distorted picture of the grade
distributions and as such, curves should not be drawn
on kriged values.
11. Similarly, grade tonnage curves based on conditional
block simulations, present the true picture, because the
very purpose of simulation is to get the same histogram
and variogram for a give block size. In literature several
examples are available where the technique of
conditional block simulation is applied. As an Indian
example Kannan et al. (1993), may be cited.
12. One of the basic deficiencies in this paper is that all
references of previous workers in respect of application
of geostatistical methods to the iron ore deposits of
India are not cited.
13. Nevertheless, the authors deserve praise for their
sincere effort in applying the state of art technology to
Indian deposits.
B.C. Sarkar and Indranil Roy, Indian School of Mines,
Dhanbad. Email: bhabesh_sarkar2003@yahoo.co.in;
reply:
Our pointwise replies to the comments are as follows:
1. No reply is required.
2. Reasons for applying ordinary kriging for estimation
of block values instead of lognormal kriging are cited
in the paper on p.559 under the section Block Kriging
lines 3 to 7. References of Champigny and Armstrong
(1988) and David (1988) clearly state the reasons. For
the sake of clarification, these are explicitly given
below:
(i) David (1988) in his book Handbook of Applied
Advanced Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation,
p.49 states Circumstances of non-stationarity may
render estimation of the parameters of a lognormal
model extremely difficult. Hence, one may use
the semi-variogram model that appears to be the
best for deriving the parameters of a model.
(ii) Champigny and Armstrong (1988) in their paper
on Estimation of Fault-controlled Deposit had
discussed on modelling of a gold deposit of
epithermal type (3
rd
International Geostatistics
Congress, Avignon, Sept.5-9, 1988, pp. 311-322).
They state Lognormal kriging was not considered
in the modelling although values conformed to a
lognormal distribution because it requires second
order stationarity of log
e
(Xj) values and not just
local stationarity.
3. The polygonal or cross-sectional block size vary
according to the notion of half way influence between
two sample points, while in kriging, the choice of
uniform block of 50 m x 50 m x 10 m size was
considered based on the open-cast iron ore mining
DISCUSSION 543
JOUR.GEOL.SOC.INDIA, VOL.67, APRIL 2006
practices at Kalta. Because of these reasons, one to
one comparison of kriged blocks versus polygonal or
cross-sectional blocks in terms of ore and waste is
never possible owing to the difference in the block
resolution. However, such comparison on an
application of a cut-off grade is possible by plotting
the estimated block values versus the actual block
values of same size (obtained by blast hole drilling).
4. A network of blocks of dimensions 50 m x 50 m x
10 m was superimposed on the ore boundaries
delineated on each level in a manner so that blocks
falling within the ore boundaries were considered for
kriging while the ones outside the ore boundaries were
not considered. The peripheral blocks are more prone
to misclassification as ore or waste. Smaller the size of
a block, better would be the precision of laying the
blocks within the ore boundaries. If the blocks are of
larger dimensions (as in the case of polygonal or cross-
sectional blocks), there will be cases of certain volume
proportion of non-ore being included in peripheral
ore blocks as well as certain volume proportion of ore
being included in peripheral waste blocks. The
peripheral ore blocks with estimated value just
equalling the cut-off grade are called marginal ores.
If a waste block of larger dimension is split into a
number of small blocks (equaling the size of kriged
blocks), invariably some small blocks within the
larger waste block will contain full ore. Similarly, a
larger ore block if split into smaller blocks, some small
blocks within the bigger block will contain full non-
ore. Such phenomena would change the estimated
tonnage of ore. In the case of Kalta iron ore deposit,
marginal increase in tonnage may be due to marginal
proportion of such peripheral small blocks included as
full ore. This is the case with any block modelling
technique.
5. The value of average specific gravity as 4.21 was
provided by Kalta mine and the same has been adopted
in the present geostatistical modelling exercise.
6. At the time of field data collection from Ka1ta mine,
the second author of the paper had observed that there
exists a variation in the values of specific gravity, even
within the same ore types. Such variation in specific
gravity values is one cause for variation in tonnage per
block and this should not be ignored.
7. Every estimation technique has its merits and
demerits. Disjunctive Kriging has certain
inconsistencies in the computation of local reserves
(Verly, G., 1983, The Multigaussian Approach and its
Applications to the Estimation of Local Recoveries,
Math. Geol., v.15, no.2, pp.259-286), viz.
(i) recovered tonnage greater than 100%;
(ii) negative recovered tonnage and/or quantity of
metal;
(iii) non-decreasing recovered tonnage and/or quantity
of metal with increasing cut-off grades; and
(iv) negative spike at the origin.
One important aspect of cross validating the
estimates arrived at by employing a chosen estimation
technique is the Conditional Unbiasedness. This has
been discussed under the Block Kriging section (p.559
of our paper, 2nd para).
If a specific author (Murthy, 1989) as cited by
Dr. Shakeel Ahmed in his comment applies a particular
estimation technique for a case study, it is not necessary
that other authors have also to apply the same technique.
Sarkar, B.C. (1993) in the Proc. ICCAMI 93, MGMI,
Madras (pp.59-61) had discussed Advances in the
Techniques of Ore body Modelling, highlighting the
techniques of linear, non-linear and non-parametric
kriging. The paper is in the same ICCAMI 93
Proceedings in which Murthy, P.S.N (1993) provided
A Note on the Application of Non-linear Geostatistical
Methods in the Estimation of Mineral Deposits on
pages 38-44.
The comments point to a single issue, i.e. deriving
grade-tonnage curves. Different authors have applied
different methods that can be grouped as:
(i) Grade-tonnage curves derived from a histogram
of sample grades;
(ii) Grade-tonnage curves derived from a continuous
distribution representing sample grades;
(iii) Grade-tonnage curves derived from local block
estimates;
(iv) Grade-tonnage curves by multiple indicator
kriging;
(v) Grade-tonnage curves based on conditional
block simulation.
Virtually, all these methods of deriving grade-
tonnage curves contain some error. In the present
modeling study, the grade-tonnage curves have been
derived from local block estimates.
12. The paper has been thoroughly reviewed by two learned
referees. The references cited in the paper sufficiently
reflect the theory and methodology adopted in the
present case study. While the individuals comment on
citing references in a paper is most welcome, the
learned referees decision must be honoured.
8.
to
11.
544 DISCUSSION
JOUR.GEOL.SOC.INDIA, VOL.67, APRIL 2006
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DISCUSSION 545