6 - Declustering - what is the true grade?

Declustering is a critical technique to understand and use when estimating a resource. It helps you get a more accurate picture of the whole ore body, but why is it controversial in parts of the industry? Optiro's Director of Geology Ian Glacken and Principal Paul Blackney discuss the technique and where to use it. 

In this episode:

0:51 What is declustering and why is mining data clustered? 1:41 What are the implications of not declustering? 2:03 When is declustering useful? 2:52 Do we need to apply declustering to ordinary kriging? 3:26 What are some of the normal methods used when declustering? 5:12 So not everyone uses declustering. Why do some practitioners disavow it? 6:10 Do you both agree on when to apply declustering? 7:22 Are there any circumstances when its mandatory to decluster? 9:12 Where should people go to learn more?

For more information:

• Contact Ian Glacken - Optiro Director of Geology: iglacken@optiro.com
• Optiro website

Links:

• Declustering and debiasing (2005) M. J. Pyrcz and C. V. Deutsch, University of Alberta, Centre for Computational Geosciences
• Applied mineral inventory estimation - Alastair J. Sinclair, University of British Columbia, Vancouver , Garston H. Blackwell, Queen's University, Ontario