Abstract:
Accurate identification of ore-forming intrusions is critical for porphyry copper exploration. Previous studies have extensively used trace-element compositions of magmatic accessory minerals, such as zircon and apatite, to evaluate the metallogenic potential of magmas. However, the trace-element compositions of accessory minerals are controlled by multiple factors, which may limit their effectiveness in recording ore-forming magma signatures. Biotite is a common rock-forming mineral in intermediate to felsic igneous rocks, and its major-element compositions are mainly controlled by the parental magma, making it a potential indicator mineral for magmatic metallogenic potential. Based on a systematic compilation of biotite data from porphyry copper ore-forming intrusions and barren intermediate to felsic intrusions worldwide, this study selected nine major elements of biotite to construct three machine-learning models, namely support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and extreme gradient boosting (XGB), for identifying porphyry copper ore-forming intrusions. The results show that all three models perform well, with accuracies of
0.9561,
0.9614, and
0.9587, respectively, indicating that this approach can effectively identify ore-forming intrusions related to porphyry copper mineralization. SHAP analysis further reveals that FeO
T, Na
2O, and MnO are the three most important features controlling model outputs, and that biotite from ore-forming intrusions is generally characterized by low FeO
T, low MnO, and high Na
2O. These results demonstrate that the major-element compositions of biotite can effectively indicate the metallogenic potential of intrusions, providing a new approach for identifying ore-forming intrusions in porphyry copper systems and for guiding exploration of similar deposit types.