Yukon-Alaska Metallogeny Project

19世纪90年代的克朗代克淘金热吸引了成千上万的淘金者到育空地区开采含金的砾石。育空地区对黄金和其他大宗商品基岩资源的勘探一直持续到今天，自2007年以来，在矿产勘探和开发方面的投资已达18亿美元。这些活动导致了一些重要的高级矿产勘探项目，已发现了800多万盎司的黄金，包括咖啡金矿、克拉扎金银矿床、怀特金矿和纽核金银矿床。然而，许多已经完成的矿产勘探都无法从对成矿作用的理解中获益——对矿石形成的地质控制——因为它还没有建立起来。该研究项目为育空地区西部和南部漫长而复杂的成矿历史提供了一个框架。对成矿作用的了解将通过对个别矿床的详细研究、涉及地质测绘和断层位置解释的区域研究、对可能与金或铜矿石有关的火成岩的特征、应用测定岩石和矿床形成时间的先进技术以及描述矿石以发展更好的矿床模型来实现。育空地区的实地和分析研究将通过与政府地质学家的合作，与阿拉斯加东部和内陆的信息结合起来。育空地区和加拿大最初将受益于产生新的地球科学资料及其吸引的矿物勘探，最终将受益于成功地将这种知识应用于矿物勘探和开发所产生的培训、就业、创造财富和税收优惠。

The Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s drew thousands of fortune-seekers to the Yukon Territory to mine gold-bearing gravels. Exploration for the bedrock source of gold and other commodities continues to the present day in the Yukon, with $1.8B spent on mineral exploration and development since 2007. Such activity has led to some important advanced-stage mineral exploration projects that have discovered over 8 million ounces of gold, including the Coffee gold deposit, the Klaza gold-silver deposit, the White Gold deposit, and the Nucleus gold-silver deposit. However, much of the mineral exploration that was done was unable to benefit from an understanding of metallogeny - the geological controls on where ore forms - because it hadn't yet been established. The research project provides a framework for the long and complex history of ore formation in western and southern Yukon. The metallogenic understanding will be achieved through detailed studies on individual mineral deposits, regional studies involving geological mapping and interpretation of fault locations, characterization of igneous rocks potentially associated with gold or copper ore, application of advanced techniques for dating the timing of rock and ore deposit formation, and the description of ores to develop better ore deposit models. Field and analytical studies in Yukon will be integrated with information emerging from eastern and interior Alaska through collaborations with government geologists.Yukon and Canada will benefit initially from the generation of new geoscientific information and the mineral exploration it attracts, and ultimately, through the training, jobs, wealth creation and tax benefits that can arise from the successful application of this knowledge to mineral exploration and development.