Barton Gold and SenSore’s AI partnership flags new gold and copper targets in SA

In March, Barton Gold announced an exclusive strategic R&D partnership to adapt SensOre’s artificial intelligence and machine learning to areas where regional structure is hidden beneath surface cover.

And it looks like the partnership is paying off – with a bunch of new gold and copper targets identified across a 60,000km2 target area in the central Gawler Craton in South Australia.

The Phase 1 prospectivity mapping generated the targets by training SensOre’s models on over 3,000 gold and copper occurrences in the state, and then analysing over 200 geophysical variables in the target area.

The Phase 1 analysis does not yet include the integration of specific project data or geochemical data layers, but Barton Gold (ASX:BGD) MD Alexander Scanlon says the preliminary results are exciting “given that Phase 1 modelling has correctly predicted targets we already know to host gold mineralisation”.

“We will be looking forward to advancing the development of SensOre’s DPT module so that we can further refine these targets for drill testing and model validation,” he said.

Large-scale discovery opportunities

The company’s tenements in SA host a mineral resources endowment of 28.68Mt at 1.2g/t gold at the Tarcoola and Tunkillia gold projects, a pipeline of advanced exploration projects and brownfield mines – and it owns the only regional gold mill in the central Gawler Craton.

Within Barton’s tenements several of the new targets generated are proximal to existing or known gold prospects, however several areas are new targets, many of which do not appear to have been previously drilled.

Subject to further evaluation, Barton believes these may represent new large-scale discovery opportunities for exploration testing.

“Our key focus is identifying and developing large-scale gold resources, but naturally we are very interested to see multiple potential large-scale copper targets identified proximal to, and sometimes coincident with, our gold targets,” Scanlon says.

“The regional geology certainly supports this potential, and we will review it carefully.”

Phase 2 analysis planned

Following detailed analysis of the Phase 1 findings, Barton will work with SensOre to further refine its models and trial the implementation of a Phase 2 ‘Discriminant Predictive Targeting’ (DPT) module.

This will include the integration of Barton’s extensive regional datasets into SensOre’s South Australian ‘data cube’, including the integration of geochemical data layers, to substantially increase data training ability.

A trial Phase 2 DPT analysis will then be conducted for review and comparison with Phase 1 outputs – followed by additional suitable field programs and conceptual drill testing to validate DPT targeting.

This article was developed in collaboration with Barton Gold Holdings, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.