Journal Article

Geology-Guided Fixed-Group Fusion ResUNet for Predicting Calcrete-Type Uranium Prospectivity: A Case Study from the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia

Zhang, Xin, Xia, Fei, Nie, Fengjun, He, Jianfeng, Li, Weidong, Diao, Fan, Fan, Dawei, Zhong, Guoyun

2026

Overview

Calcrete-type uranium prospectivity prediction is challenged by the strong heterogeneity of multi-source geoscientific raster datasets, weak anomaly responses, and the lack of explicit heterogeneous information organization in conventional deep learning models. In this study, the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia was selected as the study area, and a geology-guided fixed-group fusion ResUNet model (GGF-ResUNet) was developed based on 12-channel multi-source geoscientific raster datasets. At the input stage, the evidence layers were divided into four fixed geoscientific proxy groups according to their data modality and geological interpretation, namely gravity, aeromagnetic, radiometric, and geochemical groups, and intra-group channel weighting together with inter-group gating was introduced to enhance the hierarchical representation and adaptive fusion of heterogeneous information. Ablation results showed that GGF-ResUNet achieved better performance than the baseline ResUNet, with AUC increasing from 0.9340 to 0.9740 and F1-score improving from 0.7264 to 0.8356. Further comparative experiments with Attention U-Net, U-Net, SegNet, and FCN showed that GGF-ResUNet achieved comparatively better quantitative performance and more spatially coherent prediction results under the current experimental setting. Without substantially increasing model complexity, the proposed method improves the representation and integration of heterogeneous geoscientific information and provides a feasible technical pathway for calcrete-type uranium prospectivity prediction under weak-anomaly conditions.

• Publisher: MDPI AG
• Subject: Ablation / Artificial intelligence / Calcrete / calcrete-type uranium deposit / Case studies / Channel gating / Cratons / Datasets / Deep learning / Geology / geology-guided fixed-group fusion / Gravity / Groundwater / Heterogeneity / Lithology / mineral prospectivity mapping / Mineralization / multi-source geoscientific datasets / Neural networks / Nuclear energy / Predictions / Raster / Remote sensing / Representations / ResUNet / Uranium