Yukon-Alaska Metallogeny Project

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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.