EXPLORATION GEOCHEMISTRY AND LANDSCAPE.

As a scientific discipline evolves it tends to have two aspects, one dealing with intensive research into relatively small sections of the subject and the other concerned with general concepts, principles and methods which are relevant to whole classes of problems. As the discipline matures more and more sets of information accrue from small-scale research which then need to be considered in relation to general concepts and principles. The purpose of this paper is to discuss briefly principles and concepts of Landscape Geochemistry and, using information obtained from a hypothetical case study in Exploration Geochemistry, demonstrate how the empirical data obtained from the latter can be simply related to the underlying concepts of the former. At the end of the paper the potential value of the Landscape Geochemistry approach to Exploration Geochemistry is discussed and some conclusions drawn regarding how this may be done.