Craton boundary detection from full-waveform tomography model reveals links to critical metal deposits

Abstract

Craton margins play a crucial role in mineral exploration as they host faults, fractures, and shear zones that facilitate hydrothermal fluid movement, transporting and depositing dissolved metals into valuable mineral deposits. We use the high-resolution full-waveform seismic inversion model REVEAL to extract horizontal shear wave velocity ( V_SH ), vertical shear wave velocity ( V_SV ), and isotropic P-wave velocity ( V_P ) across depth slices from 150 to 200 km, a range that captures most cratonic lithosphere based on tectonic age and lithospheric thickness analyses. Machine learning, applied through clustered maps, demonstrates that V_SH effectively delineates craton boundaries, aligning with target mineral deposits, including iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG) and sediment-hosted lead, zinc, and copper deposits. These boundaries are characterized by high horizontal shear velocities (4.58-4.68 km/s), and trace the edges of cratons, accreted passive margins, orogens, and thick volcanic arcs. Using published thermal and lithospheric thickness models, we distinguish cratons from other thick lithospheric features and identify their edges and associated deposits. Our results show that ∼ 85% of the total metal content (Cu + Pb + Zn) in target deposits lies within ∼ 120 km of high-velocity cluster boundaries identified as craton edges. Near-craton deposits reveal ∼ 80% of the total metal content within ∼ 90 km of craton boundaries. The weighted cumulative distribution function shows a steeper gradient in metal content closer to craton boundaries, indicating higher concentrations near these tectonic features. Focusing on just 16% of Earth’s continental areas can reveal over 80% of known target deposits, highlighting the significance of craton boundaries quantitatively mapped in this study.

Keywords

Machine learning / Clustering / Seismic data / Craton boundaries / Mineral exploration

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Hojat Shirmard: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Validation, Software, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Ben Mather: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Conceptualization. Ehsan Farahbakhsh: Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Methodology, Conceptualization. Karol Czarnota: Project administration, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. R. Dietmar Müller: Writing - review & editing, Validation, Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

R Dietmar Müller and Ehsan Farahbakhsh were supported by the Australian Research Council grant LP210100173.

Data availability statement

The datasets used in this study, including geophysical, geological, and mineral systems data, are available at: https://github.com/EarthByte/Craton_Boundaries.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2025.102176.

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