Airborne and Ground IP: an integrated approach for exploration

The Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB) is one of the oldest and still active mining districts in the world. In the last decade, a renewed mining activity and scientific research have led into a wealth of new data and new geological hints for explorers and for the academic community, making the IPB one of the most important and dynamic mining districts in Europe (Inverno et al, 2015). In this region, the great number of different signatures related to the ore body and to its vectors call for an integrated use of complementary geophysical methods. The sulfides targets show contrast in both density and electrical properties, and historically gravity has played a crucial role for exploring in the IPB. These methods have been later accompanied by EM methodologies, both airborne and ground, given their high sensitivity to conductive targets (Menghini et al, 2022). With this contribution we will focus on an application of a novel modelling approach that aims to properly extract the Induced Polarization (AIP) effects from the Airborne Electromagnetic (AEM) data. The AEM survey has been acquired in the IPB for mineral exploration to localize the VMS deposit. After the AIP modelling, we will show a comparison between the airborne chargeability and some overlapping ground IP models from the same area. This comparison aims to better understand the potential in the use of AIP for exploration and to attempt an improvement in the definition of the sensitivity field of the airborne technique, as well as its relationships with ground IP. Then, a joint inversion between the two methods will be presented.