Field mapping and

economic geology
Lecture 10 - Hydrothermal Deposit
Types
Ch 17 Evans, 1997. An introduction
to Economic Geology and its
Environmental Impact.
Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_genesis#Hydroth
ermal_processes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vein_%28geology%2
9
http://tesla.jcu.edu.au/Schools/Earth/EA1004/Min
eral_Deposits/hydrothermal.html
The Vein Association
http://n.ethz.ch/student/sgeiger/COSMIC/SKM_convection2.htm
In geology, a vein is a finite volume within a rock, having a distinct shape,
filled with crystals of one or more minerals, which were precipitated from an
(aqueous) fluid. Veins are formed by fluids carrying mineral constituents into
a rock mass as a consequence of some form of hydraulic flow within the rock.
Usually this is the result of hydrothermal circulation.
So how do veins form? Veins are classically thought of as being the result of
growth of crystals on the walls of planar fractures in rocks, with the crystal
growth occurring normal to the walls of the cavity, and the crystal protruding
into open space.
This certainly is the method for the formation of some veins. However, it is
rare in geology for significant open space to remain open in large volumes of
rock, especially several kilometres below the surface.
There are two main mechanisms considered likely for the formation of veins:
open-space filling and crack-seal growth. Kinds of Veins
Hydrothermal solutions ppt metals in environments including, near magmatic high
temperature, high pressure, near surface low-T low-P conditions
Gangue minerals dominant constituents, commonly quartz, calcite depending on the
composition of the host rock indicating derivation from the surrounding host rocks
Sulfides are the most important ore bearing minerals but in the case of tin and U oxides are
predominant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vein_%28geology%29
Open space filling
Open space filling is the hallmark of epithermal vein systems,
such as a stockwork, in greisens or in certain skarn
environments. For open space filling to take effect, the confining
pressure is generally considered to be below 0.5 GPa, or less
than 3-5 kilometres. Veins formed in this way may exhibit a
colloform, agate-like habit, of sequential selvedges of minerals
which radiate out from nucleation points on the vein walls and
appear to fill up the available open space. Often evidence of
fluid boiling is present. Vugs, cavities and geodes are all
examples of open-space filling phenomenon in hydrothermal
systems.
Alternatively, hydraulic fracturing may create a breccia which is
filled with vein material. Such breccia vein systems may be
quite extensive, and can form the shape of tabular dipping
sheets, diatremes or laterally extensive mantles controlled by
boundaries such as thrust faults, competent sedimentary layers,
or cap rocks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vein_%28geology%29
Crack-seal veins
When the confining pressure is too great, or when brittle-ductile
rheological conditions predominate, vein formation occurs via
crack-seal mechanisms.
Crack-seal veins are thought to form quite quickly during
deformation by precipitation of minerals within incipient
fractures. This happens swiftly by geologic standards, because
pressures and deformation mean that large open spaces cannot
be maintained; generally the space is in the order of millimetres
or micrometres. Veins grow in thickness by reopening of the
vein fracture and progressive deposition of minerals on the
growth surface.
http://www.virtualexplorer.com.au/special/meansvolume/contrib
s/bons/text/appendixb.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vein_%28geology%29
http://www.ipgp.jussieu.fr/~andreani/photos/serpcs.jpg
Tectonic implications
Veins generally need either hydraulic pressure in excess of
hydrostatic pressure (to form hydraulic fractures or
hydrofracture breccias) or they need open spaces or fractures,
which requires a plane of extension within the rock mass.
In all cases except brecciation, therefore, a vein measures the
plane of extension within the rock mass, give or take a sizeable
bit of error. Measurement of enough veins will statistically form
a plane of principal extension.
In ductilely deforming compressional regimes, this can in turn
give information on the stresses active at the time of vein
formation. In extensionally deforming regimes, the veins occur
roughly normal to the axis of extension.
Hydraulic Fracturing
 Mineralisation and veining
Veins are of prime importance to mineral deposits, because they are the source of mineralisation
either in or proximal to the veins. Typical examples include gold lodes, as well as skarn
mineralisation. Hydrofracture breccias are classic targets for ore exploration as there is plenty of
fluid flow and open space to deposit ore minerals.
Ores related to hydrothermal mineralisation which are associated with vein material may be
composed of vein material and/or the rock in which the vein is hosted.
Gold-bearing veins
In many of the gold mines exploited during the gold rushes of the 19th century, vein material alone
was typically sought as ore material. In most modern mines, ore material is primarily composed of
the veins and some component of the wall rocks which surrounds the veins.
The difference between 19th century and modern mining techniques and the type of ore sought is
based on the grade of material being mined and the methods of mining which are used.
Historically, hand-mining of gold ores permitted the miners to pick out the lode quartz or reef
quartz, allowing the highest-grade portions of the lodes to be worked, without dilution from the
unmineralised wall rocks.
Modern mining using larger machinery and equipment forces the miners to take low-grade waste
rock in with the ore material, resulting in dilution of the grade.
However, modern mining and assaying allows the delineation of lower-grade bulk tonnage
mineralisation, within which the gold is invisible to the naked eye. In these cases, veining is the
subordinate host to mineralisation and may only be an indicator of the presence of metasomatism
of the wall-rocks which contains the low-grade mineralisation.
For this reason, veins within hydrothermal gold deposits are no longer the exclusive target of
mining, and in some cases gold mineralization is restricted entirely to the altered wall rocks within
which entirely barren quartz veins are hosted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vein_%28geology%29
Important Vein Deposit Types
Archaean Greenstone
Belts
Epithermal Deposits in
Volcanic terranes
Carlin-type Deposits

Boudinaged quartz vein in dextral shear

foliation, Starlight Pit, Fortnum Gold Mine,
Western Australia.
Archaean Vein Gold Deposits
Yilgarn Block WA contains thousands of individual
deposits the majority of which produce < 1t Au.
However they can contain several giant deposits eg
Kalgoorlie golden mile
Contained in greenschist facies metm rocks in
structures of brittle-ductile transition regime
Dominant host rock is tholeiitic basalt and komatiites.
The physical properties of these rocks favour hydraulic
fracturing and fluid access and their composition
controls gold deposition within the veins.
Some of the gold bearing solutions are metamorphic in
origin
Wall rock alteration involves addition of SiO2, K2O,
CO2, H2O and Au
Yilgarn Craton
Gold in the Yilgarn
The Yilgarn Craton gold endowment is considered to be a process of a prolonged
period of cratonic development during a series of orogenic episodes beginning at
about ~2.9Ga and culminating in ~2.67Ga. These events saw the assembly of the
Yilgarn Craton from several 'proto-cratons' or unconsolidated terranes of perhaps
older earlier-formed granite-gneiss, probably of similar nature to the Narryer Gneiss
Terrane. These have been mostly destroyed by the voluminous tonalite-trondhjemite-
granodiorite (TTG) magmatism of c. 2.75-2.85Ga, which saw vast quantities of
essentially uniform igneous-derived granitoids intruded into the existing greenstone
belts, thus forming the cratonising event.
These granites now form pillow-like flatly-dipping to steeply dipping sheath-like
margins to the greenstone terranes, and may have contributed to the gold
mineralisation either during the metamorphic decarbonation-dehydration reactions or
as heat engines to drive thermal convection and hydrothermal fluid flow.
The greenstone-granite terranes of the Yilgarn Craton have subsequently been
affected by several later metamorphic events and deformations, which have now
overprinted the craton with zones of steeply-dipping foliation and vertically thrust-
offset fault blocks. These later events tend not to cause mineralisation, instead causing
structural disruption of the gold lodes. Gold mineralisation in the Yilgarn Craton
usually occurs at the contact between the veins and wallrocks. Formation of these
deposits is linked to mid-crustal level processes during regional metamorphism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yilgarn_craton
Archaen Gold – Structural Settings
Metamorphic Origin of Hydrothermal Fluids
Hydrothermal Systems, Fluid Inclusions
& Mineral Exploration
Fluid inclusions are droplets of fluid trapped
in crystals at the time of their growth or
subsequently introduced along microcracks
and cleavages
They represent samples of hydrothermal fluids
and range in size from a single water molecule
up to several mm and avg about 0.01 mm
Practical uses of fluid inclusions include;
information on the T, P, density and
composition of the mineralising fluids
Types of Fluid Inclusions
There are 3 types of fluid inclusions:
Primary – those that became trapped during the
growth of the host mineral & are therefore assoc
with crystallisation features such as growth zones
Secondary – those that form after the growth of
the host mineral is completed. They cut across
growth zones and crystal boundaries and may
represent infilling of microcracks by late fluids
Psuedo-secondary – these form during the 2 stages
above and are characterised by their alignment
with microcracks that end against a growth zone
Types of Fluid Inclusions
 Fluid Inclusion Classification
1. Monophase – entirely filled with liquid (L)
2. Two-phase – filled with L phase and a small vapour bubble
(L+V)
3. Two-phase – in which vapour phase is dominant & occupies
more than 50% volume (V+L)
4. Monophase vapour inclusion (V) – generally mixtures of H2O,
CH4, CO2
5. Multiphase inclusions containing solids (S+L+/-V) – contain
solid crystalline phases known as daughter minerals.
Commonly halite NaCl & sylvite KCl & sometimes sulfides
6. Immiscible liquid inclusions – 2 liquids, usually one H2O-rich
and the other CO2-rich (L1+L2+/-V)
Fluid
Inclusion
Types
Fluid Inclusion Interpretations
The coexistence of L+V and V+L phases may
indicate that the fluid was boiling during entrapment
In the case of boiling;
In a one component system the gas bubble is the vapour
phase of the host liquid
In a heterogeneous system the gas phase exsolves by
effervescence
However, gas bubbles may also indicate
immiscibility eg CO2, when present, will separate on
cooling
The presence of daughter minerals indicates that
solids nucleated from an oversaturated liquid sol’n
In these hypersaline fluids Na+, Cl-, Mg2+, Ca2+ are
the most common dissolved ions
Fluid Inclusion Measurements
Measurements on fluid inclusions are carried out by means of
heating and freezing thick-sections on specially designed
microscope stages
Homogenisation of the liquid and gas phase will be seen to
occur at a given T whilst gradually heating the inclusion
This T is a lower limit, having been obtained at atmospheric
pressure, & pressure correction for the original depth is required
Salinity of inclusion is determined by first freezing the inclusion
& then raising the T & observing the first & final melt T. The
first melt T indicates the type of salt (eg NaCl or MgCl) while
the last melt indicates the degree of salinity, usually measured in
equivalent NaCl
Temperature-
salinity fields
Fluid Inclusion Compositions
The liquid of the inclusion is normally an aqueous
sol’n with dissolved ions of Na+, Cl-, Ca2+, Mg2+, SO42-
, HCO32-, CO32-
The concentration of the salts in the sol’n ranges from
<1 wt. % to >50 wt. %
Different styles of mineral deposits have vastly
different homogenisation T’s indicating a large range
of hydrothermal fluids can be responsible for
mineralization eg epithermal Au-Ag generally has low
conc of NaCl indicating low T of formation (200-300
C) whereas porphyry Cu have high conc. indicating
high T
Fluid Composition and Metal
Partitioning
Analysis of typical hydrothermal fluids indicates that
Na, K, Cl & Ca are almost always the major
components
Minor components include Sr, Fe, Zn, Mg, Mn, CO2,
SO2, H2S and NH3
The most striking feature is that concentrations of
ore-forming metals is generally low. Therefore it can
be deduced that metal conc’s in hydroth fluids need
not be high to form an ore deposit
The critical factors for ore dep’n must be time &
deposition rate
Composition of Hydrothermal Fluids
Metals in Hydrothermal Fluids
Hydrothermal fluids acquire their dissolved constituents by one
of 2 processes;
Constituents are released to a fluid by a crystallising magma eg Cu in
porphyries
Constituents are derived from the rock thru which the hot fluid is
circulating
A rock need not be enriched in certain elements initially to serve
as the final source of these elements
Experiments show that elements such as Fe, Zn, Cd, Cu & Mn
are strongly partitioned into chloride-rich hydroth fluids rather
than staying within the crystal lattice of rock forming minerals,
referred to as leaching or partitioning
Metal Transport
Complex Ions & Ligands
Important in the dissolution of Ni, Cu, Zn, Pt, Au,
Co, Cr, Mo, W
Important ligands include NH3, H2O, Cl-, OH-,
HS-
Eg Pt(NH3)42+ + 2Cl = Pt(NH3)4Cl2 (complex
cation)
Pt(NH3)Cl3- + K = Pt(NH3)Cl3K (complex anion)
Au + H2S HS- = Au(HS)2- + 1/2H2 (Au thio-
complexing)
Metal Deposition
Ppt’n of dissolved constituents in hydrothermal fluid
occurs as a result of either, T variations, P changes and
boiling, rea’ns between wallrock and fluid, mixing of
different fluids (black smokers)
Boiling is the most important of these as it results in
almost instantaneous removal of volatile phases and a
sudden increase of metal concentrations in the
remaining sol’n which may not be able to keep these
metals dissolved. This is an important mechanism of
Au, Ag ppt’n in geothermal systems by removing
ligands from sol’n
HCO3- + H+ = CO2 + H2O
HS- + H+ = H2S (g)
Boiling

http://n.ethz.ch/student/sgeiger/COSMI
C/SKM_convection2.htm#section3
Black Smokers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_smoker
 Black smoker metal precipitation

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02fire/background/hirez/chemistry-hires.jpg
Carlin-type
Deposits