Weights-of-evidence and logistic regression modeling of magmatic nickel sulfide prospectivity in the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia

Abstract

Bayesian weight-of-evidence and logistic regression models are implemented in a GIS environment for regional-scale prospectivity modeling of greenstone belts in the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia, for magmatic nickel sulfide deposits. The input variables for the models consisted of derivative GIS layers that were used as proxies for mappable exploration criteria for magmatic nickel sulfide deposits in the Yilgarn. About 70% of the 165 known deposits of the craton were used to train the models; the remaining 30% was used to validate the models and, therefore, had to be treated as if they had not been discovered. The weights-of-evidence and logistic regression models, respectively, classify 71.4% and 81.6% validation deposits in prospective zones that occupy about 9% of the total area occupied by the greenstone belts in the craton. The superior performance of the logistic regression model is attributed to its capability to accommodate conditional dependencies amongst the input predictor maps, and provide less biased estimates of prospectivity.