Fertile or Barren: an open benchmark of mineralized and barren mafic-ultramafic intrusions (v0.1.0)
Year: 2026
Type: dataset
Abstract: An open benchmark for testing geochemical fertility indices for magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulfide deposits. The benchmark contains 13,025 whole-rock analyses from 514 mafic-ultramafic intrusions labeled fertile, weakly mineralized, or barren, together with sample-type classifications, a reproducible scoring workflow, and a public leaderboard. Preprint: Danso, B.K., Dankwa, J.O., Aidoo, A.A. (2026). Fertile or Barren: an open benchmark for testing geochemical fertility indices on mineralized and barren mafic-ultramafic intrusions. Preprint, not peer reviewed; submitted to EarthArXiv. Included in this record as Danso_et_al_2026_Fertile_or_Barren_preprint.pdf. Version 0.1.1: adds the preprint and Figure 1b (benchmark intrusions in the conterminous United States, with USGS deposits). Data, labels and leaderboard scores are unchanged from v0.1.0. Headline numbers: 34 fertile, 19 weakly mineralized and 461 barren intrusions. Best index: Pd/Ir, AUC 0.75 (95% CI 0.62-0.85). Three indices rank barren intrusions above fertile ones (Ni/Cu, Ni depletion vs MgO, Cu/Zr). Contents: benchmark table (data/processed/benchmark_samples.csv); intrusion table with labels, deposits and references (data/processed/intrusions.csv, data/curated/); public scoring program (code/score.py); leaderboard of 12 indices (leaderboard/); figures and tables (paper/); pipeline that rebuilds everything from the public sources (run_all.sh); codebook, scoring rules, limitations and verification record (docs/). Sources: GEOROC precompiled compilations (DIGIS Team, GRO.data, September 2026, CC BY-SA 4.0); USGS Critical Mineral Deposits of the United States ver. 3.0; USGS magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE inventory (2026); USGS Mineral Resources Data System. Please also cite GEOROC and the original sample publications (GEOROC reference numbers in the CITATIONS column). Licenses: data CC BY-SA 4.0; code MIT; figures and tables CC BY 4.0. Read docs/LIMITATIONS.md before using the labels: "barren" mostly means no deposit on record.
Language: English
Subfield: Geochemistry and Petrology
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7224670846