Machine Learning-Based Mapping for Mineral Exploration

We briefly review the state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) algorithms for mineral exploration, which mainly include random forest (RF), convolutional neural network (CNN), and graph convolutional network (GCN). In recent years, RF, a representative shallow machine learning algorithm, and CNN, a representative deep learning approach, have been proved to be powerful tools for ML-based mapping for mineral exploration. In the future, GCN deserves more attention for ML-based mapping for mineral exploration because of its ability to capture the spatial anisotropy of mineralization and its applicability within irregular study areas. Finally, we summarize the original contributions of the six papers comprising this special issue.