Prospectivity and Uncertainty Analysis of Tungsten Polymetallogenic Mineral Resources in the Nanling Metallogenic Belt, South China: A Comparative Study of AdaBoost, GBDT, and XgBoost Algorithms

Supervised machine learning algorithms are utilized to predict undiscovered mineral resources by analyzing the correlation between geological data and mineral deposits. The scarcity of mineralization and the uncertainty arising from the selection of training samples also the accuracy and generalization of such algorithms. This study employed the adaptive boosting (AdaBoost), gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT), and extreme gradient boosting (XgBoost) algorithms to map the prospectivity of tungsten polymetallic mineral resources in the Nanling metallogenic belt. Firstly, the under-sampling and synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) methods were used to generate training datasets. Secondly, 50 groups of training datasets were generated using under-sampling, and another 50 groups of training datasets were generated using the SMOTE method. These datasets were used to separately train different boosting algorithms in order to assess the uncertainty associated with the selection of negative samples and the generation of positive samples. Finally, the risk–return analysis was used to mitigate uncertainty, and an enhanced prediction–area (P–A) plot was proposed to evaluate the performance. The results indicate that AdaBoost is the least affected by the selection of negative samples, followed by XgBoost. The SMOTE not only enhances the performance of AdaBoost and XgBoost algorithms but it also reduces the uncertainty related to the selection of negative samples and the generation of positive samples. In addition, the enhanced P–A plot can simultaneously account for both prediction accuracy and uncertainty, making it a potential tool for model evaluation. According to the results, eight potential areas with high return and low risk have been identified as priority areas for exploration. This research not only introduces a new method for mineral prospectivity mapping and uncertainty evaluation but also provides guidance for mineral exploration in this region.