Separate lead isotope analyses of leachate and residue rock fractions: implications for metal source tracing in ore deposit studies

Separate lead isotope analyses of leachate and residue fractions are applied to a broad spectrum of rocks commonly investigated in metallogenic studies. Resulting data highlight a systematic behavior of leachate and residue fractions with respect to lead isotope compositions, which essentially depends on the mineralogical composition of the rock. Granitoid and high-grade metamorphic rocks have residue compositions virtually identical to common lead. In contrast, low-grade metasedimentary rocks may have residue compositions swamped by radiogenic lead of leach-resistant zircons. Mafic magmatic rocks have residues that are often more radiogenic than leachates, depending on the ratio of leach-refractory zircons to common lead in the residual fraction of these rocks. Separate leachate and residue analyses of source rocks provide two lead isotope end members whose mixture may represent lead with the appropriate ore fluid composition. Our leaching experiments indicate that hot acid solutions (and by inference hydrothermal fluids) preferentially leach radiogenic lead from medium- to high-grade metamorphic and granitoid rocks, whereas they preferentially leach common lead from low-grade metasedimentary and mafic magmatic rocks. The method presented in this study provides a reliable alternative to other methods (i.e., age-correction of bulk-rock compositions) for the determination of the common lead signature of felsic to intermediate magmatic rocks. This may be preferable to age-corrected bulk-rock analyses, where ages to apply for corrections of bulk-rock data are not known or where moderately to highly altered rocks must be used. Case studies of orogenic gold and MVT districts of Peru (Pataz and San Vicente, respectively) show that separate leachate and residue lead isotope analyses carried out systematically on whole rocks allow a more thorough evaluation of metal source reservoirs than does the standard method of age-corrected or uncorrected bulk-rock analyses.     

Chlorine-36 in groundwater of the United States: empirical data

Natural production of the radionuclide chlorine-36 (³⁶Cl) has provided a valuable tracer for groundwater studies. The nuclear industry, especially the testing of thermonuclear weapons, has also produced large amounts of ³⁶Cl that can be detected in many samples of groundwater. In order to be most useful in hydrologic studies, the natural production prior to 1952 should be distinguished from more recent artificial sources. The object of this study was to reconstruct the probable preanthropogenic levels of ³⁶Cl in groundwater in the United States. Although significant local variations exist, they are superimposed on a broad regional pattern of ³⁶Cl/Cl ratios in the United States. Owing to the influence of atmospherically transported ocean salt, natural ratios of ³⁶Cl/total Cl are lowest near the coast and increase to a maximum in the central Rocky Mountains of the United States. Electronic Publication     

Fault plane solutions of the january 26th, 2001 bhuj earthquake sequence

A 12-station temporary microearthquake network was established by the Geological Survey of India for aftershock monitoring of the January 26th, 2001 Bhuj earthquake (M _w 7.6) in the Kutch district of Gujarat state, western India. The epicentres of the aftershocks show two major trends: one in the NE direction and the other in the NW direction. Fault-plane solutions of the best-located and selected cluster of events that occurred along the NE trend, at a depth of 15–38 km, show reverse faulting with a large left-lateral strike-slip motion, which are comparable with the main-shock solution. The NW trending upper crustal aftershocks at depth <10 km, on the other hand, show reverse faulting with right-lateral strike-slip motion, and the mid crustal and lower crustal aftershocks, at a depth of 15–38 km, show pure reverse faulting as well as reverse faulting with right-lateral and left-lateral strike-slip motions; these solutions are not comparable with the main-shock solution. It is inferred that the intersection of two faults has been the source area for stress concentration to generate the main shock and the aftershocks.     

Palaeomagnetic results from the ca. 1130 Ma Borgmassivet intrusions in the Ahlmannryggen region of Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, and tectonic implications

Detailed palaeomagnetic and rock magnetic analyses provide improved palaeomagnetic results from 23 sites in the Borgmassivet intrusions in the Ahlmannryggen region of Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica. These intrusions are of similar age to their host, the ca. 1130 Ma Ritscherflya Supergroup (RSG). A mean direction of D=235.4°, I=−7.6° with k=45.9 and α₉₅=4.5° was obtained from this study. When combined with previously reported results from 11 sites in the same region, including sites from the Ritscherflya Supergroup, it gives an overall mean direction for 34 sites from the igneous suite with D=236.5°, I=−3.6°, k=27.9 and α₉₅=4.8°. Isothermal remanent magnetization (IRM) experiments on several specimens suggest magnetite or titanomagnetite as the primary remanence carrier, while high temperature magnetic susceptibility experiments indicate the presence of single domain particles. These observations, together with field evidence and the high coercivities and unblocking temperatures, support a primary origin for the observed characteristic remanence. The Borgmassivet palaeomagnetic pole lies at 54.5°E, 8.3°N with A₉₅=3.3°. If Antarctica is moved to its Gondwanan position adjacent to southeast Africa, the Borgmassivet pole (BM) coincides with that of the African well-established, well-dated (1100 Ma) Umkondo Large Igneous Province pole, supporting the hypothesis that the Grunehogna craton of Dronning Maud Land was part of the Kalahari craton of southern Africa at ca. 1100 Ma.     

Confirmation of an Early Cretaceous age for the Qihulin Formation in eastern Heilongjiang Province, China: constraints from a new discovery of radiolarians

The coal-bearing, alternating marine and non-marine Longzhaogou Group in eastern Heilongjiang, northeastern China, has long been considered as Jurassic, or mainly Jurassic, in age. However, recent studies have demonstrated that the ammonites and dinoflagellate cysts are of Early Cretaceous age. This has now been confirmed by new radiolarian evidence. The radiolarian fauna recovered from the upper Qihulin Formation of the Longzhaogou Group consists of nine poorly preserved species referable to nine genera. Novixitus is a Cretaceous genus, and the specimens of Archaeodictyomitra sp. and Xitus sp. recovered resemble A. vulgaris Pessagno and X. spicularius (Aliev), respectively.     

新疆西达里亚T-II油藏储层三维建模研究

在新疆西达里亚T-Ⅱ油气藏的储层表征研究中,首先进行了地质及测井解释,在此基础上应用地质统计学方法进行了三维储层地质建模,建模过程中采用先建立砂层格架,再建立属性参数的“两步建模”研究思路,理论上减少了砂体与属性参数的解释矛盾与误差,提高了属性模型精确度.通过实际生产动态对属性模型进行检验,证明建模结果是正确的.     

Theoretical Study on Stochastic Modeling of Combined Gravity-Magnetic-Electric-Seismic Inversion and Its Application

As gravity field,magnetic field,electric field and seismic wave field are all physical fields,their object function,reverse function and compound function are certainly infinite contiuously differentiable func-tions which can be expanded into Taylor (Fourier) series within domain of definition and be further reduced in-to solving stochastic distribution function of series and statistic inference of optimal approximation,This is the basis of combined gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic inversion built on the basis of separation of field and source gravity-magnetic difference-value(D-value)trend surface,taking distribution-independent fault sys-tem as its unit,depths of seismic and electric interfaces of interests as its corresponding bivariate compound re-verse function of gravity-magnetic anomalies and using high order polynomial(high order trigonometric func-tion)approximating to its series distribution,The difference from current dominant inversion techniques is that,first,it does not respectively create gravity-seismic,magnetic-seismic deterministic inversion model from theoretical model,but combines gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic stochastic inversion model from stochastic model;second,after the concept of equivalent geological body being introduced,using feature of independent variable of gravity-magnetic field functions,taking density and susceptibility related to gravity-magnetic func-tion as default parameters of model,the deterministic model is established owing to better solution to the con-tradictioc of difficulty in identifying strata and less test analytical data for density and susceptibility in newly explored area;third,under assumption of independent parent distribution,a real modeling by strata,the prob-lem of difficult plane closure arising in profile modeling is avoided,This technology has richer and more detailed fault and strata information than sparse pattern seismic data in newly explored area,successfully inverses and plots structural map of Indosinian discontinuty in Hefei basin with combined gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic inversion,With development of high precision gravity-magnetic and overall geophysical technology,it is certain for introducing new methods of stochastic modeling and computational intelligence and promoting the develop-ment of combined gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic inversion to open a new substantial and promoting the develop-ment of combined gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic inversion to open a new substantial path.     

Development of Geological Data Warehouse

Data warehouse (DW), a new technology invented in 1990s, is more useful for integrating and analyzing massive data than traditional database. Its application in geology field can be divided into 3 phrases: 1992-1996, commercial data warehouse (CDW) appeared; 1996-1999, geological data warehouse (GDW) appeared and the geologists or geographers realized the importance of DW and began the studies on it, but the practical DW still followed the framework of DB; 2000 to present, geological data warehouse grows, and the theory of geo-spatial data warehouse (GSDW) has been developed but the research in geological area is still deficient except that in geography. Although some developments of GDW have been made, its core still follows the CDW-organizing data by time and brings about 3 problems: difficult to integrate the geological data, for the data feature more space than time; hard to store the massive data in fifferent levels due to the same reason; hardly support the spatial analysis if the data are organized by time as CDW does. So the GDW should be redesigned by organizing data by scale in order to store mass data in different levels and synthesize the data in different granularities, and choosing space control points to replace the former time control points so as to integrate different types of data by the method of storing one type data as one layer and then to superpose the layers. In addition, data cube, a wide used technology in CDW, will be no use in GDW, for the causality among the geological data is not so obvious as commercial data, as the data are the mixed result of many complex rules, and their analysis needs the special geological methods and software; on the other hand, data cube for mass and complex geo-data will devour too much store space to be practical. On this point, the main purpose of GDW may be fit for data integration unlike CDW for data analysis.