Collaborative Research: Testing endmember hypotheses for the source of mineralizing fluid(s) in iron oxide - copper - gold (IOCG) deposits

随着我们对电池电动汽车、太阳能电池板和风力涡轮机等技术的使用增加，社会对铜等关键矿物的需求只会扩大。了解铜等元素如何在矿床中富集是很重要的。对铜日益增长的需求面临的一个主要障碍是如何勘探和发现铜矿床。这个项目的重点是提高我们对两种铜矿床形成方式的理解，并开发寻找未发现矿床的方法。它还将支持一名研究生和几名本科生，他们将接受测绘、测井、采样和实验室方法方面的培训。该项目将首次对大型氧化铁-铜-金（IOCG）矿物系统（Humboldt）中岩石的多元素同位素特征进行约束，该矿物系统作为沉积盆地衍生蒸发卤水成因模型的端元类型场所，并将这些数据与纯岩浆-热液斑岩-铜矿物系统（Yerington）和看似混合的盆地卤水和岩浆-热液系统IOCG系统（Ernest Henry）进行比较。综合同位素分析应揭示可用于定义这些系统的端元化学特征，并可能用作寻找未知矿化系统的地球化学矢量。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Societal demand for critical minerals like copper will only expand as our use of technology such as battery electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines increases. It is important to understand how elements such as copper concentrate in ore deposits. One major obstacle facing the growing demand for copper is how to explore for and find copper ore deposits. This project focuses on improving our understanding of how two types of copper ore deposits form and developing methods to find undiscovered deposits. It will also support a graduate student and several undergraduates who will be trained in mapping, logging, sampling, and laboratory methods.This project will be the first to constrain the multi-element isotopic signature of rocks in a large iron oxide - copper - gold (IOCG) mineral system (Humboldt) that serves as the end-member type locale for the sedimentary basin derived evaporitic brine genetic model and compare those data with a purely magmatic-hydrothermal porphyry-copper mineral system (Yerington), and a seemingly mixed basinal brine and magmatic-hydrothermal system IOCG system (Ernest Henry). The integrated isotopic analysis should reveal end-member chemical signatures that can be used to define these systems as well as potentially be used as a geochemical vector to find unknown mineralization systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.