Exploration geochemistry continues to be a major contributor to mineral exploration programs at all scales. The decade has spanned a complete economic cycle in the minerals industry, during which there has been a change in exploration emphasis from the dominance of Au and diamonds to the addition of a range of base metals and the recent revival of U exploration.
the development of new geochemical techniques has allowed exploration activity to expand in previously under-explored terrains. There has been significant evolution and refinement of geochemical dispersion models for the deposited mineralization.
These models have prompted further developments in sampling methods, analytical techniques and approaches to anomaly detection.
The routine measurement of fundamental soil and groundwater properties, such as pH, has been demonstrated to assist in detecting geochemical and mineralogical effects of buried mineralization on regolith. New litho geochemical techniques have been developed for terrane selection and early discrimination of potentially mineralized units.