Confirming Ground Geophysical Survey for Mineralization in Al Bayda Area, Yemen

The Jabal Mabal-prospect of Al Bayda area is covered by meta-volcano sedimentary rocks. The importance of the study area comes from previous studies, which proved that the area has mineralization zones at the periphery of Jabal Al-Mabal. These mineralized zones lie along northwest-southeast shear zones, which occur inside the meta-volcanic rocks. The previous studies concluded that the mineralization was mostly associated with sulphides, especially at the reduction zones. These sulphides give a good response to electrical or electromagnetic techniques. The present study uses electrically induced polarization and Genie electromagnetic surveys to explore the extension of the mineralization zones at the subsurface. The self-potential (SP) technique shows numerous of mineralized zones. Most of these zones are distributed in the southern area along the contact between the quartz and gabbro. The induced polarization (IP) method has been applied on the selected profiles to delineate the subsurface contact between calcite, gabbro and quartz in Al-Jarra Valley and to calculate the shape and depth of the mineralization zones in the subsurface along these profiles. The Genie electromagnetic survey, which has been applied on selected profiles, delineated some weak mineralization occurrences corresponding to the shear zones. The integration of the results obtained using these three techniques, in addition to the different ground geophysical methods previously used, makes it possible to determine the most appropriate zones for development of exploration at the area of investigation.