Abstract:

Delineation of geochemical anomalies is essential both in exploration geochemistry and environmental geochemistry Since the first attempt of using the concentrationarea (CA) multifractal method for separating geochemical anomaly from background, it has become an innovative field of exploration and environmental geochemistry and various fractal filtering techniques have been developed for decomposing overlapping geochemical anomalies from complex backgrounds This paper  reviews the state of the art of the research on distribution patterns of geochemical elements and the approaches to identify geochemical anomalies, and demonstrates that the multifractal model provides a general distribution type for geochemical elements The “concentrationarea (CA)” fractal model is a fundamental model for characterizing geochemical anomalies related to mineralization or environment pollution impact It also provides a base for fractal filtering in various domains such as Fourier domain, Eigen domain and Wash domain The fractal filtering methods developed in these domains have not only the general advantages of traditional statistical methods but also added attraction as they  deal with anisotropic scaling and generalized selfsimilarity From application point of view these methods can reduce the influence of the variable background and enhance the local anomalies The methods have been commonly applied in delineation of target areas for mineral exploration and in recognition of pollution patterns for environmental assessment

Key words: geochemical anomaly; concentrationarea; multifractal; mineral exploration; environmental assessment