Sunrise Resources has revealed that it will turn to AI, by commissioning Canadian company Geotech to evaluate and interpret geophysical data at its Reese Ridge zinc-lead-silver(-gallium) project in Nevada.
Using artificial intelligence-based tools, the mineral explorer aims to refine drill targets at the project, which it has flagged as showing the hallmarks of carbonate replacement deposit mineralisation, which is a style that it highlighted can host both large and high-grade accumulations.
"High-grade mineralisation outcrops at Reese Ridge in places over a wide area and is characteristic of the Carbonate Replacement Deposit style of mineralisation which can be both large and high-grade," said Patrick Cheetham, Sunrise's executive chairman.
"The work now commissioned will utilise Self-Organising Mapping tools based on artificial intelligence to refine drill targets with the objective of significantly increasing the chances of discovery," he said.
Reese Ridge sits on the southern margin of Nevada's Humboldt Structural Zone, roughly 52 miles south-southwest of Battle Mountain, on a fault-bounded limestone horst block flanked by younger volcano-sedimentary basins.
Surface sampling has already returned grades up to 6.8% zinc, 3.3% lead and 51g/t silver from iron-rich gossans, while a separate style of mineralisation hosted in altered limestone has yielded assays as high as 29.6% zinc alongside 68ppm gallium.
Sunrise moved its focus onto its Nevada earlier this year, and reported further high-grade surface sampling at Reese Ridge in August, including narrow vein samples running up to 9.9% zinc, more than 20% lead and 192g/t silver.
Geotech holds a proprietary geophysical database built during exploration of the adjacent Reese River geothermal system, where magnetotelluric and ZTEM airborne electromagnetic surveys have independently identified a zone of low resistivity 250 metres beneath the surface mineralisation, a signal that may point to a larger body of mineralisation at depth.
The firm previously interpreted ZTEM data for Sunrise and has now been engaged to integrate magnetic survey data with the electromagnetic results, running 3D magnetic vector inversion, magnetic structural complexity analysis and self-organising map analysis across the combined datasets.
The newly commissioned work programme is expected to take six to eight weeks to complete.
