Mineral systems: Their advantages in terms of developing holistic genetic models and for target generation in global mineral exploration

Mineral systems: Their advantages in terms of developing holistic genetic models and for target generation in global mineral exploration

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geogeo.2021.09.001

Announcing a new publication for Geosystems and Geoenvironment journal. Geosystems and Geoenvironment is a quarterly international interdisciplinary journal in English that publishes high quality original research articles and timely reviews in interdisciplinary fields of Earth and Environment Sciences. Geosystems and Geoenvironment provides an integrated platform to publish breakthrough data and findings, as well as innovative concepts and models, related to the emergence and all related aspects of surface or deep Earth Systems and their planetary equivalents.

In this article researchers from the University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia; the China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China; University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia and Kochi University, Kochi, Japan discuss how mineral systems provide a logical and hierarchical mechanism to integrate information over a range of time and terrane scales using the broad critical components of Geodynamics (tectonic setting), Fertility (source of ore and hydrothermal fluid components), Architecture (fluid plumbing systems) and Preservation (degree of post-ore uplift and erosion).

The article demonstrates, that although their adoption in published economic geology literature appears limited, there is value in such mineral systems for single deposit classes, using orogenic gold as an example, and closely related deposit groups, using porphyry-high-sulfidation-skarn Cu-Au-Mo systems as an example. The value of grouping disparate deposit classes based on similarities of their Geodynamics and Preservation parameters is demonstrated by the siting of numerous, not normally grouped, deposit classes on the margins of cratons and blocks with thick mantle lithosphere. Consideration as mineral systems provides a useful way of “seeing the wood for the trees” and defining universally applicable genetic models for deposit classes. It also allows focus on the critical measurable parameters that aid exploration to the exclusion of small-scale information that may only be uniquely applicable to the specific deposit from which it was derived.

Article reference: David I. Groves, M. Santosh, Daniel Müller, Liang Zhang, Jun Deng, Li-Qiang Yang, Qing-Fei Wang, Mineral systems: Their advantages in terms of developing holistic genetic models and for target generation in global mineral exploration, Geosystems and Geoenvironment,

Volume 1, Issue 1, 2022, 100001, ISSN 2772-8838, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geogeo.2021.09.001.

Keywords: Mineral systems; Orogenic gold systems; Porphyry Cu-Au systems; Craton margins; Metallogenic factories

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ISSN 2772-8838

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