Lithotype Analysis of Hyperspectral Imagery for Mineral Drill Cores from Alberta using the Lithotype™ Method

The Alberta Geological Survey (AGS) contracted Hyperspectral Intelligence Inc. (HII) to process and analyze an existing hyperspectral imagery dataset from archived mineral drill cores stored at the AGS Mineral Core Research Facility in Edmonton, Alberta. HII completed analysis of a total scan length of 50 842.61 m from 805 drill cores. These cores were drilled during previous mineral exploration projects to target a variety of commodities and intervals of interest, including gold, diamonds, lithium brines, uranium, base metals, polymetallic shales, potash, evaporites, kimberlite-indicator minerals, titanium, platinum, silver, copper, zinc, lead, oil sands, and zones of potential mineralization or hydrothermal alteration. The drill cores selected for this project intersect a variety of lithologies and stratigraphic intervals from the Precambrian basement, Paleozoic carbonates and evaporites, Mesozoic fine- and coarse-grained siliciclastics, through to Quaternary sediments. The core locations are distributed across the Athabasca Basin, Canadian Shield, and Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) within Alberta. The hyperspectral imagery analyzed for this project was originally collected between November 2021 and February 2022 for a project under the AGS Mineral Mapping Program, in which the AGS contracted Spectrum Geosciences Ltd. to scan the drill cores using TerraCore Geospectral Imaging's hyperspectral core imaging system. In 2024, the resultant hyperspectral imagery dataset was reprocessed by HII using its proprietary tools and Lithotype™ method. To effectively apply the Lithotype™ method to meaningfully related subsets of drill core, this large dataset was subdivided into seven categories, based on allocations to the Geological Framework of Alberta (GFA): (1) Archean and Paleoproterozoic - Athabasca Basin; (2) Archean and Paleoproterozoic - Canadian Shield; (3) Cambrian, Lower Ordovician, and Silurian; (4) Devonian; (5) Carboniferous to Jurassic; (6) Cretaceous; (7) Paleogene to Quaternary. 
The Lithotype™ method was applied separately to each subset of cores to produce outputs that can be used to better understand the compositional characteristics of Alberta's geological units in a mineral exploration and stratigraphic context. 
This work was completed under the Mineral Grant provided by the Government of Alberta June 22, 2021.