Ressources minérales du Tchad: une revue

Chad has an area of about 1.2 million km², is located in the centreof the African continent and is not well explored. Results of importance to the local economic geology have been acquired recently, mainly during mineral exploration:

• 1. 

  i) all geological formations within Chad territory were reworked/influenced by the Pan-African Orogeny (by the end of the Proterozoic) terminating the crustal evolution of the area with most of the Chad granitoids being formed during this event;

• 2. 

  ii) The Precambrian formations are of Proterozoic age and contain volcanosedimentary series with considerable mineral potential (Au,…);

• 3. 

  iii) the vast Chad Basin (extending into neighbouring countries) has a complex structure and includes several sub-basins and troughs, whose development started during the break-up of Gondwana; they have been filled by up to 10, 000 m of sediments and petroleum and gas occur within these structures;

• 4. 

  iv) well preserved fossil remnants of an Australopithecus have been recently found in Chad; and

• 5. 

  v) large reserves of oil and vaste resources of a variety of minerals (Au, ornamental stones, marbles, diatomites, etc.) have been found.

     

Geochemical framework for water quality studies in sub-Saharan Africa

The scope for using hydrogeochemical techniques in water quality studies in Africa is reviewed as a background to a set of thematic papers. Water quality problems are emerging as a key issue in Africa either:

• 1. 

  i) in view of the pressures of man-made pollution on finite resources; or

• 2. 

  ii) the existence of regions with naturally induced geological problems, for example fluoride endemic areas.

Such natural problems are the focus of this paper and the following topics were emphasised during a workshop in Sodere, Ethiopia: the need to determine natural baselines as a means of recognizing anthropogenic pollution; the need for high quality samples and field data, but relatively basic analytical data; the use of chloride to assist in recharge estimation and water-balance studies; an understanding of depth stratification of water quality as part of the design of well/borehole drilling programmes; the use of hydrogeochemistry in geothermal studies; the recognition of health and/or acceptability problems, especially for F, Fe, Mn, As, I and Al. Water quality standards for African countries need to be considered in the context of local geochemical environments and some of the WHO limits, especially for major ions, may be unattainable owing to naturally high total mineralization.     

Lack of low-grade metamorphism in the Triassic formations of the Argana basin, Morocco: an illite crystallinity re-evaluation

Analysis of mineral assemblages and illite crystallinity of the Arganan Triassic formations show that:

• 1. 

  i) mixed-layers are present across almost all of the section; and

• 2. 

  ii) values of illite crystallinity are quite dispersed and lie mostly in the diagenetic zone, with no gradient related to burial.

It is therefore concluded that, contrary to ideas proposed recently, there is no evidence for very low-grade metamorphism related to crustal thinning during the early rifting of the Central Atlantic. Fluctuations of illite crystallinity values are interpreted as due to complex interactions of detrital heritage and several factors governing illitization and improvement of illite crystallinity. The increase in temperature during burial constitutes only one of them.     

Paleomagnetism and the alpine tectonics of Eurasia V: The paleomagnetism of some mesozoic and cenozoic volcanic rocks from the lebanon

A sampling of Mesozoic and Tertiary basalts in Lebanon yielded the following information:

Age	D	I	α95	Pole position	dp	dm
Upper Jurassic	95	+21	10.6	114E 2N	5.9	11.2
				66W 2S
Lower Cretaceous	122	+2	9.0	105E 25S	4.5	9.0
				75W 25N
Upper Pliocene	2	+46	7.7	169E 88N	6.3	9.8
				11W 88S

Full-size table

These results confirm and amplify earlier work by Van Dongen et al., and can be interpreted as indicating a net anticlockwise rotation of Lebanon relative to the African tectonic plate amounting to about 70° during the Late Jurassic-Pliocene interval. This could have resulted from differential movement between the African and European plates as they made way for the growing Atlantic Ocean.     

Earthquake recurrence on the Calaveras fault east of San Jose, California

Occurrence of small (3 M_L < 4) earthquakes on two 10-km segments of the Calaveras fault between Calaveras and Anderson reservoirs follows a simple linear pattern of elastic strain accumulation and release. The centers of these independent patches of earthquake activity are 20 km apart. Each region is characterized by a constant rate of seismic slip as computed from earthquake magnitudes, and is assumed to be an isolated locked patch on a creeping fault surface. By calculating seismic slip rates and the amount of seismic slip since the time of the last significant (M 3) earthquake, it is possible to estimate the most likely date of the next (M - 3) event on each patch. The larger the last significant event, the longer the time until the next one. The recurrence time also appears to be increased according to the moment of smaller (2 < M_L < 3) events in the interim. The anticipated times of future larger events on each patch, on the basis of preliminary location data through May 1977 and estimates of interim activity, are tabulated below with standard errors. The occurrence time for the southern zone is based on eight recurrent events since 1969, the northern zone on only three. The 95% confidence limits can be estimated as twice the standard error of the projected least-squares line. Events of M 3 should not occur in the specified zones at times outside these limits. The central region between the two zones was the locus of two events (M = 3.6, 3.3) on July 3, 1977. These events occurred prior to a window based on the three point, post-1969 slip-time line for the central region.

Latitude	Longitude	Depth	Mag.	Target date	Standard error (days)
37°17′± 2′N	121°39′±2′W	5.0 ±2 km	3.0–4.0	7-22-77	22.3
37°26′± 2′N	121°47′±2′W	6.0 ± 2 km	3.0–4.0	9-02-77	8.0

Full-size table

     

Extreme rainfall events in Catalonia. The case of 12 November 1988

A study of the synoptic situation which produced the catastrophic floods of November 1988 in Catalonia (in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula) is presented. Analyses of the vertical structure, potential instability, precipitable water, and instability index are made through the radiosounding data from Palma, Majorca. It is found that the 1988 situation is included in type I intense convective events in Catalonia (classification obtained from all the events since 1950, (Llasat, 1989)). It was characterized by:

Oxygen isotope studies of wolframite in tungsten ore deposits of south China

Based on the oxygen isotopic compositions of 133 wolframite samples and 110 quartz samples collected from 30 tungsten ore deposits in south China, in conjunction withδD values and other data, these deposits can be divided into four types.

Experimental evidence of decompression melting during exhumation of subducted continental crust

Experiments have been carried out on a metagreywacke at 800, 850 and 900°C, in the pressure range 0.5–5 GPa to locate the solidus and the eclogite/amphibolite facies transition in felsic rocks, identify the nature of the reactions responsible for major mineralogical changes, and determine the proportions of phases as a function of pressure. The mineral assemblage phengite + clinopyroxene + garnet + quartz/coesite is stable above 2.3 GPa while biotite + plagioclase + garnet + quartz is stable below 2 GPa. The model reaction for the eclogite/amphibolite facies transition in metagreywackes is: