Environmental awareness,the Transition Movement,and place: Den Selvforsynende Landsby,a Danish Transition initiative

The Transition Movement, originating in Ireland and the United Kingdom, gathers and supports community-led actions to meet the global challenges of climate change, peak oil and energy descent. In our study we analysed a Transition Network project, a Danish village built from scratch by its inhabitants and named the Self Sufficient Village (SSV). Employing the theories of constructed landscapes and place attachment, we studied how the Transition Movement ideology shaped the constructed landscape of the village and influenced the inhabitants’ attachment. The research team, following the grounded theory approach, conducted a field study staying in SSV. We collected data with focus groups, individual interviews and participatory observations, taking part in daily life of the community. The analysis revealed three, intertwined themes which altogether create the constructed landscape of SSV. They were named Community, Ideology, and Individual impact, respectively. Our findings showed that the community and strong social ties were predominant factors in shaping place attachment. Transition ideology and environmental awareness, although less pronounced, still turned out to be vital for the feelings of belongingness and empowerment, resulting in a positive impact of the village on the local scale. Using our case study as an example we discuss the importance of environmental concern and place attachment for similar grass-root initiatives.     

Locating diversity: race,nativity and place in health disparities research

Nancy Krieger has been one of the leading voices in documenting how social ‘axes of difference’, including race, ethnicity and class make people vulnerable to poor health and limit their access to effective health care. We discuss the importance of ‘locating’ diversity in health inequalities research. This includes critically dissecting racial and ethnic axes into more nuanced social categories that incorporate differences based on immigration and other factors. It also involves considering how diverse population groups vary in their perception and use of space for health-related activities and exposures. Examples relating to immigrant populations’ health and access to health care are discussed.     

Situating local experience of risk: Peripherality, marginality and place identity in the UK foot and mouth disease crisis

Research into exposure to, and experience of, environmental risk that has an explicitly spatial focus can be broadly differentiated into two strands. The first strand focuses on the responses of communities of exposure (or the threat of exposure) to some form of environmental hazard and to the policies put in place by institutional actors to manage the hazard. The second strand addresses social inequalities in exposure to environmental hazards and seeks to correlate uneven spatial distributions of risk across different social groups. It is argued that both strands are limited by their respective understandings of space - and that the way in which vulnerable communities experience environmental risk and its management will be shaped significantly by the complex interactions of different spatialisations or constructions of space. We explore this process by examining accounts of local experience of the UK’s 2001 foot and mouth disease crisis and its management in terms of the interplay of two different spatialisations: socio-cultural marginality and political-economic peripherality. We trace the relationship between these cultural and political-economic spatialisations through an analysis of the discursive mobilisation of contrasting place rhetorics. We conclude that focusing on these rhetorics can enhance our understanding of the spatial processes which are constitutive of place identity and in turn mediate the experience of environmental risk and its management.     

‘This place gives me space’: place and creativity in the creative industries

This paper focuses on the relationship between place and individualised creativity in micro and small enterprises within the creative industries. The paper uses the findings from qualitative interviews with workers in the craft metalwork and digital design sectors of the creative industries in the UK to analyse how the perceived attributes of a location may provide inspiration in the creative process. Current spatial theory on the creative industries has emphasised both collective creativity and ways in which clusters of creative enterprises in particular places can promote creativity. This paper analyses the empirical evidence obtained in the interviews and argues that the links between place and creativity can be important and influential in the creative process and that current theory needs to be extended to take greater account of individual creativity and the ways in which the attributes of localities can be used as a catalyst for individual creativity.     

Strategies for forging and sustaining social movement networks: A case study of provincial food networking organizations in Canada

Social movement organizations (SMOs) play an important role in movement building, however, the particular context and structure of a SMO has a direct impact on its ability to foster and sustain collaboration. In this paper I investigate the unique positioning of provincial networking organizations (PNOs) in Canadian food movements and document their efforts to support alternative food initiatives (AFIs) to interact and act collaboratively for food system change. The research draws on a network survey, over 35 in-depth interviews, site visits, and background information collected in three Canadian provinces to explore the ongoing work necessary for linking together heterogeneous elements without central coordinating mechanisms. I describe the ways that PNOs have established a series of common networking strategies to bring AFIs together across sectors, scales and places: (1) the creation of physical spaces that involve direct contact in particular places; (2) the development of virtual spaces where connections are mediated through digital technologies; and (3) the use of scalar strategies that scale-up local projects to address provincial level policy. I conclude by identifying key areas of contention that arise within the networks, and show that the different structures of the PNOs impact their ability to establish and implement networking strategies. I argue that addressing these challenges must be a preemptive focus in order to sustain networking activity. My contention that contemporary structures of social mobilization require novel strategies and support from networking organizations provides insight for studies of SMOs and movement building more broadly.     

Agrarian Dynamics, Population Growth and Resource Management: The Case of Burundi

What role has intense population pressure played (and continues to play) in ancient and contemporary transformations in Burundian agriculture? A considerable disincentive to development and source of imbalance for some, an engine of agricultural growth for others: does this age-old debate still make sense in the present context? Based on an extensive study of agrarian dynamics, the reconstruction of the different agrarian systems that have been in place in Burundi, and an investigation of the phases of major transformations that have enabled the passage of one system to another, the author ventures a rereading of the most commonly cited interpretations of Malthus and Boserup, and proposes a new approach to this fundamental question.     

Translocal assemblages: Space, power and social movements

In this paper, I deploy an analytic of ‘translocal assemblage’ as a means for conceptualising space and power in social movements. I offer a relational topology that is open to how actors within movements construct different spatial imaginaries and practices in their work. In using the prefix ‘translocal’, I am signifying three orientations. First, translocal assemblages are composites of place-based social movements which exchange ideas, knowledge, practices, materials and resources across sites. Second, assemblage is an attempt to emphasise that translocal social movements are more than just the connections between sites. Sites in translocal assemblages have more depth than the notion of ‘node’ or ‘point’ suggests – as connoted by network – in terms of their histories, the labour required to produce them, and their inevitable capacity to exceed the connections between other groups or places in the movement. Third, they are not simply a spatial category, output, or resultant formation, but signify doing, performance and events. I examine the potential of assemblage to offer an alternative account to that of the ‘network’, the predominant and often de facto concept used in discussions of the spatiality of social movements. I draw on examples from one particular translocal assemblage based in and beyond Mumbai which campaigns on housing within informal settlements: Slum/Shack Dwellers International.     

“Twenty years is yesterday”: Science, multinational mining, and the political ecology of trust in New Caledonia

To date, the scholarly literature has insufficiently investigated the micropolitical ecology of trust, the ways that different interests and expectations within a community can differentially mediate trust relationships between members of that community and an exogenous institution. This study explores the complexities of, and intra-community disagreements about, Kanak villagers’ decisions about whether to trust information provided by, or seemingly in support of, a multinational mining project in southern New Caledonia (South Pacific). An indigenous protest group challenged the company’s claims that the construction and operation of a refinery would have no harmful effects on local ecosystems. The company construed this opposition as stemming from fear based in ignorance, to which the solution lay in the provision of technical information. However, villagers disagreed as to whether this information was reliable. Meanwhile, many project employees joined the protest group. I argue that this seeming irony may be explained by examining the role of affiliation - defined here as a sense of solidarity with a group, and the desire to maintain that relationship - in establishing trust. Culturally-informed expectations of long-term social relationships and the reciprocal power these entailed, and concerns about long-term economic security, played a large role in determining which affiliations people chose to privilege, which in turn influenced which “scientific” information they chose to trust. Ultimately, I argue for the usefulness of a deeper understanding of relationships between trust, affiliation, and expectations of long-term social and economic relations in analyzing lay persons’ evaluations of science.     

Resisting coal: Hydrocarbon politics and assemblages of protest in the UK and Indonesia

This article examines the social and material politics of coal, focusing on mobilizations against opencast mining in the United Kingdom and Indonesia. Contested spaces and practices elicited by coal extraction provide important openings through which to understand how ‘hydrocarbon modernity’ is experienced and entangled with different processes of neoliberal capitalism. We investigate resistance against coal at Ffos-y-Fran in South Wales and the IndoMet project in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan, exploring how assemblages of protest have challenged the material effects, discursive practices and regimes of accumulation attendant within the coal industry. In both countries, campaigns seeking to ‘end coal’ have built dynamic geographical alliances, and as collective challenges to mining activities have unfolded, we consider how movements targeting specific sites of extraction have sought to disrupt the industry’s 'dis-embedding' of coal from the landscape. Drawing on accounts of how hydrocarbon politics shape societies, the approach we present draws attention to changing linkages between economic, environmental and social advocacy while illuminating the varied ways in which coal mining can compound and perpetuate inequality.     

Stop FEMA Now: Social media,activism and the sacrificed citizen

In an era of late capitalism and climate crisis, an expanding, heterogeneous network of people find themselves precariously positioned at the edge of disaster. This paper explores how Stop FEMA Now, a coalition of U.S. flood disaster survivors and other coastal homeowners, used social media to challenge neoliberal policies that produced – and then privatized – environmental risk. I find that social media played a crucial and sometimes unexpected role in enabling activists to organize across difference and cohere around an identity that emphasized their multiple layers of vulnerability and responsibilization. Through images that reembedded natural disasters in their political and economic contexts, activists exposed their historic and ongoing abandonment by neoliberal policies and state failures. Ultimately, such abandonments forfeited coastal homeowners to a future marked by fiscal and climate crisis, constituting them as sacrificed citizens. And yet, I also propose that the struggles of sacrificed citizens offer new possibilities for coalitions and pluralisms.     

Some things old, some things new: The spatial representations and politics of change of the peak oil relocalisation movement

Despite continued uncertainty about the physical realities and political, economic and social implications of peak oil, combined concerns about oil scarcity, climate change and globalisation has spawned an energetic relocalisation movement dedicated to achieving a comprehensive reduction in oil dependency through community-scale initiatives. This paper uses a discourse approach to examine the emergence, geographical spread and practices of the Transition Network, a UK-originated relocalisation movement now involving 186 local initiatives in the UK and other countries. We trace the movement’s drawing upon, and innovation from, discourses and techniques used by other grassroots environmental movements to promote a spatial representation of peak oil as an inevitable and geographically undiscriminating problem, and its use of addiction metaphors and participatory techniques to promote personal and community-scale energy descent initiatives as a viable and necessary alternative to globalisation. We also analyse the spatial representations and techniques used in the Network’s “rhizomic” spread across multiple localities around the world and embedding in communities where relocalisation initiatives are established. We conclude by examining the future challenges these spatial constructions of peak oil pose for the relocalisation movement.     

Respatialization and local protest strategy formation: Investigating high-speed rail megaproject development in the UK

Understanding spatial conceptions is critical to the analysis of local protest strategy formation. Spatialities provoke inquiry into the drivers that may prompt local actors to adhere to particular strategies, and the implications this has on forms of contestation and the way protest is organized. It is argued that local protest can ‘respatialize’ when actors are embedded in social movements and translocal assemblages associated with controversy over development, and that this warrants reconsidering the role of ‘place’. A case study of a proposed megaproject framed in the national interest – a high-speed rail network called HS2, in the United Kingdom – is used to investigate local protest respatialization. Fieldwork was conducted in the Chilterns, an area of high scenic beauty which will be adversely impacted by HS2. The results show how the perceived need to respatialize protest away from the local to the national domain reconfigures debate to focus primarily on economic issues. Respatialization also has implications for the dynamics of protest assemblages with unlikely alliances developing around a need to engage with or engender debate in the national polity. It is concluded that local actors may opt to respatialize their protest in response to their interaction with social movements and protest assemblages that disengage from specific place-based interests. The paper recommends that future research on the geographies of social action take forward spatialization as a powerful lens for investigating protest strategy formation.     

Migration in a transitional economy: Beyond the planned and spontaneous dichotomy in Vietnam

Migration is frequently portrayed as a negative force in its relationship with economic and social development. This negative perception is exhibited through describing population movements as either ‘forced’ (e.g. political and environmental refugees) or ‘voluntary’ movements (e.g. economic and uninhibited relocation). This paper examines the limitations of this conceptual dualism. It points out that the dualistic approach, widely used in the context of developing countries, simplifies a highly complex phenomenon by ignoring its essential heterogeneity and spatial and temporal dynamics. As such, it is limited in explaining and understanding the globally diversified, historically and politically contextualised situations. Focusing on the migratory experiences of contemporary Vietnam, the study identifies major patterns and trends of population mobility in the country in the past fifty years. It shows that despite the state’s continued attempts to reshape the spatial distribution of population over recent historical periods, the policy outcomes with respect to population mobility have been swayed as much by individuals and their families in pursuit of their own aspirations and livelihoods as by state plans. The Vietnam case has provided evidence of a much more complicated relationship between migration and livelihoods than the conceptual dichotomy assumes, and the opportunity for a richer set of policy options. We argue that the evidence from Vietnam, and elsewhere, warrants an integrated approach to studying migration, combining analysis at the macro- and micro-levels with the nexus lying at the critical decision-making point of the individual or household.     

江南过渡带东至查册桥金矿床~(40)Ar-~(39)Ar年代学及成矿条件研究

查册桥金矿是近年来在江南过渡带发现的一个金多金属矿床,本文对该矿床与矿化有关的蚀变花岗闪长斑岩中绢云母进行了~(40)Ar-~(39)Ar年龄测试,获得蚀变岩金矿石绢云母坪年龄156.9±1.6 Ma,等时线年龄152±28 Ma和矿化强蚀变花岗闪长斑岩绢云母坪年龄142.1±1.3 Ma,等时线年龄137±13 Ma。程檀矿段与牛头高家矿段流体包裹体均一温度为160℃左右,氢氧同位素特征显示成矿热液以岩浆热液为主。结合本区及邻近矿区相关研究成果,本区金矿主要为浅成、低温型,成矿物质和热液具有多来源特征,原生金矿以微细粒浸染型为主,具类卡林型金矿矿化特征,其年龄值分别对应于燕山期不同阶段构造活动和成岩成矿作用时代,其成矿过程经历了中侏罗世韧-脆性挤压构造变形和蚀变、矿化,晚侏罗世-早白垩世早期与岩体侵入相关的金多金属矿化,以及早白垩世中、晚期浅成低温热液成矿作用。     

Transition from calc-alkaline to potassium-rich magmatism in subduction environments: geochemical and Sr, Nd, Pb isotopic constraints from the island of Vulcano (Aeolian arc)

The problem of mantle metasomatism vs. crustal contamination in the genesis of arc magmas with different potassium contents has been investigated using new trace element and Sr–Nd–Pb isotopic data on the island of Vulcano, Aeolian arc. The analysed rocks range in age from 120 ka to the present day, and cover a compositional range from basalt to rhyolite of the high-K calc-alkaline (HKCA) to shoshonitic (SHO) and potassic (KS) series. Older Vulcano products (>30 ka) consist of HKCA–SHO rocks with SiO₂=48–56%. They show lower contents of K₂O, Rb and of several other incompatible trace element abundances and ratios than younger rocks with comparable degree of evolution. ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ranges from 0.70417 to 0.70504 and increases with decreasing MgO and compatible element contents. ²⁰⁶Pb/²⁰⁴Pb ratios display significant variations (19.31 to 19.76) and are positively correlated with MgO, ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd (0.512532–0.512768), ²⁰⁷Pb/²⁰⁴Pb (15.66–15.71) and ²⁰⁸Pb/²⁰⁴Pb (39.21–39.49). Overall, geochemical and isotopic data suggest that the evolution of the older series was dominated by assimilation–fractional crystallisation (AFC) with an important role for continuous mixing with mafic liquids. Magmas erupted within the last 30 ka consist mostly of SHO and KS intermediate and acid rocks, with minor mafic products. Except for a few acid rocks, they display moderate isotopic variations (e.g. ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr=0.70457–0.70484; ²⁰⁶Pb/²⁰⁴Pb=19.28–19.55, but ²⁰⁷Pb/²⁰⁴Pb=15.66–15.82), which suggest an evolution by fractional crystallisation, or in some cases by mixing, with little interaction with crustal material. The higher Sr isotopic ratios (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr=0.70494–0.70587) of a few, low-volume, intermediate to acid rocks support differentiation by AFC at shallow depths for some magma batches. New radiogenic isotope data on the Aeolian islands of Alicudi and Stromboli, as well as new data for lamproites from central Italy, are also reported in order to discuss along-arc compositional variations and to evaluate the role of mantle metasomatism. Geochemical and petrological data demonstrate that the younger K-rich mafic magmas from Vulcano cannot be related to the older HKCA and SHO ones by intra-crustal evolutionary processes and point to a derivation from different mantle sources. The data from Alicudi and Stromboli suggest that, even though interaction between magma and wall rocks of the Calabrian basement during shallow level magma evolution was an important process locally, a similar interpretation can be extended to the entire Aeolian arc. Received: 27 September 1999 / Accepted: 24 May 2000     

Fluid Evolution and Metallogenic Dynamics during Tectonic Regime Transition: Example from the Jiapigou Gold Belt in Northeast China

The Jiapigou gold belt, one of the most important gold-producing districts in China, is located in the northern margin of the North China Craton (NCC). The tectonic evolution of the gold belt is closely related to the Siberian Plate (SP) in the north, Yangtze Craton (YC) in the south and Pacific Plate in the east. In order to investigate the nature of the tectono-fluid-metallogenic system, the authors investigated the relationships among the tectonic regimes, fluid evolution and metallogenesis. This paper examined the corresponding spatial–temporal relationship between the ore-controlling tectonic regime and hydrothermal fluid evolution in the Jiapigou gold belt. There are two types of gold mineralization: disseminated ores that are distributed within the NW-trending main ductile shear zone and gold-bearing quartz veins and minor disseminated ores that are distant to the ductile shear zone. The fluid inclusions in quartz contain a large amount of CO₂. Metamorphic fluids of middle to high temperatures and pressures and meteoric waters of low temperatures and pressures mixed together during mineralization. A proposed ore-forming model is as follows: in the pre-ore phase, the collision of SP and NCC resulted in the NS-trending compression of the ore belt. This formed the NE-trending and NW-trending shear faults and EW-trending folds. During the ore-forming phase, the collision of YC and NCC resulted in dextral shearing of the NW-trending Jiapigou fault and the NE-trending Green faults. High-pressure fluids caused by the compression flowed into the dilatant zone. This may have caused both phase separation of CO₂-bearing fluids and the mixing of meteoric waters, metamorphic waters and magmatic source fluids and finally resulted in the disequilibrium of the ore fluids and precipitation of ore minerals.     

Territorializing land conflict: Space,place, and contentious politics in the Brazilian Amazon

Brazil possesses a long history of violent struggle for land, and its most recent phase is occurring predominantly in the Amazon Basin. Consequently, this paper attempts to territorialize land conflict in the Brazilian Amazon, and in so doing, to illuminate the place-specific intersection of historic social, political, and economic circumstance that created a violent landscape in the so-called “South of Pará.” The paper’s premise is that such conflict can be best viewed as resulting from a dialectic between general social processes operating across spatial scales, which create necessary conditions for conflict, and place-specific historical circumstances that transform necessary into sufficient conditions. The paper presents a framework integrating the theory of contentious politics and literatures addressing violence associated with the Amazonian frontier and with resource scarcity (and abundance). The discussion and theoretical application deconstruct the environmental, cognitive, and relational mechanisms that created violence in the South of Pará, and set the stage for the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre in April of 1996.     

Mesozoic and Cenozoic vertical movements in the Atlas system (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia): An overview

The E-W trending Atlas System of Maghreb consists of weakly shortened, intra-continental fold belts associated with plateau areas (“Mesetas”), extending between the south-westernmost branch of the Mediterranean Alpine Belt (Rif-Tell) and the Sahara Platform. Although the Atlas system has been erected contemporaneously from Morocco to Algeria and Tunisia during the Middle Eocene to Recent, it displays a conspicuous longitudinal asymmetry, with i) Paleozoic outcrops restricted to its western part; ii) highest elevation occurring in the west, both in the Atlas System and its foreland (Anti-Atlas); iii) low elevation corridors (e.g. Hodna) and depressed foreland (Tunisian Chotts and Sahel area) in the east. We analyse the origin of these striking contrasts in relation with i) the Variscan heritage; ii) crustal vertical movements during the Mesozoic; iii) crustal shortening during the Cenozoic and finally, iv) the occurrence of a Miocene-Quaternary hot mantle anomaly in the west. The Maghreb lithosphere was affected by the Variscan orogeny, and thus thickened only in its western part. During the Late Permian-Triassic, a paleo-high formed in the west between the Central Atlantic and Alpine Tethys rift systems, giving birth to the emergent/poorly subsident West Moroccan Arch. During the late Middle Jurassic-Early Cretaceous, Morocco and western Algeria were dominantly emergent whereas rifting lasted on in eastern Algeria and Tunisia. We ascribe the uplift of the western regions to thermal doming, consistent with the Late Jurassic and Barremian gabbroic magmatism observed there. After the widespread transgression of the high stand Cenomanian-Turonian seas, the inversion of the Atlas System began during the Senonian as a consequence of the Africa-Eurasia convergence. Erosion affected three ENE-trending uplifted areas of NW Africa, which we consider as lithospheric anticlines related to the incipient Africa-Europe convergence. In contrast, in eastern Algeria and Tunisia a NW-trending rift system developed contemporaneously (Sirt rifting), normal to the general trend of the Atlas System. The general inversion and orogenesis of the Atlas System occurred during two distinct episodes, Middle-Late Eocene-Oligocene and Late Miocene-Pliocene, respectively, whereas during the intervening period, the Africa-Europe convergence was mainly accommodated in the Rif-Tell system. Inversion tectonics and crustal thickening may account for the moderate uplift of the eastern Atlas System, not for the high elevation of the western mountain ranges (Middle Atlas, High Atlas, Anti-Atlas). In line with previous authors, we ascribe part of the recent uplift of the latter regions to the occurrence of a NE-trending, high-temperature mantle anomaly, here labelled the Moroccan Hot Line (MHL), which is also marked by a strip of late Miocene-Quaternary alkaline magmatism and significant seismicity.     

Surface hydrology and soil movement in an arid karst: the Nullarbor Plain,Australia

The Nullarbor Plain is the largest karst area in Australia (220,000 km²) and one of the largest in the world. Its climate is arid (Köppen BWk and BWh), and the surface relief is less than 10m. The landscape is divided into extensive closed karstic depressions separated by low rocky ridges, and the dominant vegetation is chenopod shrubland. The extent and severity of soil degradation has been assessed using remote sensing. GPS rectified images from 1972–1973, 1979, 1983, 1988, and 1991 have been compared for two sites on the Nullarbor. Over the 19 years the total extent of bare soil has reduced significantly, but some areas around water points have degraded and there is some disturbance due to fossorial wombats. Sheet-flow processes occur during intense rainfall events, which happen two or three times per decade. Runoff only occurs after the 10– or 50– year return frequency events, and at these times turbid water ponds in depressions and enters caves. Surface soil sorptivity and hydraulic conductivity differ markedly between ridges and depressions; the ridges are clearly zones of groundwater recharge, while ponding is evident in most depressions. Sorptivity is influenced by the extent and nature of ground cover and cryptogam crusts on the soil. The landscape has been divided into classes on the basis of vegetation type and percentage of foliage cover. In each class the activities of fallout radionuclides will be determined by high resolution spectroscopy. Preliminary results suggest that in undisturbed sites little sediment movement has occurred over the time scale of cesium-137 (the last 35 years) but that the landscape has been well sorted over a much longer time scale. Future work will investigate disturbed sites to estimate relative soil loss during the pastoral period.     

Long-lived Nb-Ta mineralization in Mufushan,NE Hunan,South China: Geological,geochemical, and geochronological constraints

The Mufushan Complex (MFSC), located in northeastern Hunan, is a significant producer of Nb-Ta-Li-Be rare metals in South China. The present study examines the genetic relationship, material provenance, fluid evolution, and metallogeny of the co-developed ore-free pegmatite (OFP) and ore-bearing pegmatite (OBP) in granite-related pegmatite-type Nb-Ta rare-metal deposits in MFSC. Three minerals (columbite-tantalite (coltan), zircon, and monazite) were chosen for analysis. The coltan grains display both primary crystallization structures (crystal homogeneity, oscillatory zonings, and primary growth rims) resulting from equilibrium and disequilibrium reactions due to localized changes in the physicochemical conditions and environment, as well as later replacement structures (alteration rims, patches, irregular zonations, and complex zonations) from metasomatic replacement processes related to hydrothermal fluid activity. The coltan yielded two weighted mean ²⁰⁶Pb/²³⁸U ages of 138.1 ± 2.1 Ma and 125.3 ± 2.0 Ma corresponding to magmatic and hydrothermal Nb-Ta mineralization ages. For the OFP, zircons also yielded two weighted mean ²⁰⁶Pb/²³⁸U ages of 138.4 ± 0.8 Ma and 131.5 ± 0.7 Ma, whereas monazite gave a weighted mean U-Pb age 142.9 ± 1.2 Ma. The ages of 142–138 Ma and 131 Ma represent the early and late stages of OFP crystallization and barren pegmatites in the MFSC, respectively. Zircon Lu-Hf isotopic compositions link rare-metal metallogenesis to the Lengjiaxi Group, which was the source material to the Mufushan composite batholith. Calculated ε_Hf(t) values and T_DM2 ages from the OFP (?7.6 to ?3.6 and 1676–1418 Ma, respectively) and the OBP (?14.1 to +4.9 and 2976–1548 Ma, respectively) are akin to those of schists and metasandstones of the metasedimentary Lengjiaxi Group. We propose a long-lived (ca. 13-Myr) event involving two metallogenic episodes of Nb-Ta mineralization in the Mufushan region. This study demonstrates the potential of zircon, coltan, and monazite for fingerprinting minerals and classifying the mineralization potential of pegmatite veins.