Application of fuzzy clustering and fuzzy classification to evaluate the provenance of glacial till

To evaluate the provenance of glacial till, the trace element content of magnetite was used. Magnetite was present in all known rock types and all till samples in the area investigated. By using fuzzy-set theory it was possible to group samples of magnetite taken from bedrock into relatively homogeneous and geologically meaningful groups and also, by fuzzy classification, to relate the till samples to the rocks in such a way that the relative contribution of each rock type to the till is estimated. Each rock and till sample is assigned a membership value between 0 and 1 for each rock type. The membership values, for a certain rock type in the till, are then interpolated by kriging onto maps. Magnetites from skarns associated with sulfide ores especially are rather distinct, and so a map of such membership values for till unveils all known ore deposits some 1–5 km downstreamin the general direction of the ice flow. Other anomalies show up which cannot be related to hitherto known ores or mineralizations.