Chemical fingerprinting of hydrothermal ore deposit systems

该计划中进行的研究将解决有关重要类型金矿如何形成的真正根本问题。到目前为止，地质学家认为变质金矿床和岩浆金矿床中携带和储存黄金的流体都是“低盐度的水-碳酸盐流体”(H2O-CO2±CH4)。这种描述极其简单，过分简化了已被证明涉及每种矿床类型的具体实例的矿石流体的复杂性，并忽略了可能对成矿至关重要的流体成分的微妙之处。更有问题的是，这种描述鼓励了这样的假设，即这些矿床类型是相似的，尽管它们的基本构造环境显然完全不同。在截然不同的地质环境中，成矿流体真的有可能如此相似、如此简单吗？回答这个问题将有助于地质学家更好地了解金矿形成背后的基本过程，金矿是加拿大过去一个世纪经济的重要组成部分，也将有助于矿产勘探公司更有效地专注于工作和支出。

The research undertaken in this program will address truly fundamental questions about how important types of gold deposits form. Until now, geologists have understood the fluids that carry and deposit gold in both metamorphic and magmatic gold deposits to be ‘low-salinity aqueous-carbonic fluids’ (H2O-CO2±CH4). This description is extremely simple, grossly oversimplifies the complexity of the ore fluids that have been proven to be involved in specific examples of each of the deposit types, and ignores subtleties of fluid composition that may be critical to ore formation. More problematically, this description encourages the assumption that these ore deposit types are similar, even though their fundamental tectonic settings are clearly entirely different. Is it really possible that the ore-depositing fluids in strikingly different geologic settings are so similar and so simple? Answering this question will help geologists understand the fundamental processes behind the formation of gold deposits, a significant part of the Canadian economy for past century, much better, and will also help mineral exploration companies focus their work and their expenditures more efficiently.