Background of Research

Table 1: Examples of Pathfinders in some Mineral Deposits (Carreño, 2022)

Background and Rationale

Many of the metals that modern societies rely on for infrastructure, renewable energy, and technology are concentrated deep underground and are not visible at the Earth’s surface. Finding these resources depends on understanding how hot fluids move through rocks and transport metals over time, leaving behind chemical traces that can be detected even when the deposit itself is hidden (Heinrich, 2007; Seward et al., 2014).

Because valuable metal deposits are often buried or obscured, exploration commonly relies on detecting elements that are more mobile and easier to find than the target metals themselves. As fluids move through rocks, some elements spread farther and form broad chemical “footprints” around a deposit even when the main concentration remains hidden at depth (Pohl, 2011). These elements act as indirect indicators of mineralization, allowing scientists to recognize areas influenced by metal-bearing fluids and narrow the search for valuable resources (Carreño, 2022). Understanding which elements produce reliable signals, and how those signals change as rocks are altered, is therefore essential for improving the efficiency and accuracy of mineral exploration.

Geological Setting

The Atlin ophiolite complex, located in Atlin, British Columbia, Canada, includes an upper mantle section of the Tethyan oceanic lithosphere and part of the regional Cache Creek terrane of the Canadian Cordillera. Ophiolites are thrust sheets of oceanic crust and upper mantle rocks that have been uplifted and exposed above sea level, often atop continental lithosphere (Halder, 2020). This area was selected for study because it contains numerous historical mineral deposits and mine sites that offer excellent surface exposures for geological sampling (Figure 2).

The complex is primarily comprised of harzburgite with subordinate dunite, which are then variably altered to serpentinite and listwanite (Hansen et al., 2005; Tominaga et al., 2023).

Critical metal mineralization within the Atlin ophiolite have been closely associated with carbonatization and potassic metasomatism (chemical compositional changes within a rock) of the imbricated slices of ultramafic mantle tectonites and mafic crustal rocks (Ash et al., 2001; Buckman et al., 2010).

Figure 2: Geological map of the Atlin B.C. Area displaying rock type and mineral occurences. Bedrock Geology obtained from the Government of B.C. GeoAtlas: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/mineral-exploration-mining/british-columbia-geological-survey/geology/bcdigitalgeology

Figure 3: EEGL Lab Crew Sitting on an Outcrop at Pictou Mine

Research Objective

The objective of this study is to evaluate whether pathfinder elements can be reliably correlated with gold, nickel, and cobalt concentrations within target rock types (dunite, serpentinite, and listwanite) in the Atlin ophiolite complex. Specifically, this project aims to identify elemental associations and compositional trends that distinguish the three major ultramafic alteration stages and to determine whether certain accessory or trace elements consistently track critical metal enrichment.

To achieve this, handheld XRF measurements from 20 rock samples collected in the Atlin area were analyzed using summary statistics, correlation matrices, and principal component analysis (PCA) to detect multivariate relationships and geochemical groupings. The overarching research question guiding this study is:

“Which pathfinder elements, if any, show statistically meaningful relationships with critical metals (e.g., Ni, Co, Cr, Au proxies) across the dunite–serpentinite–listwanite assemblage at the Atlin ophiolite, and can these relationships support improved exploration targeting in similar geological systems?”

Page updated

Report abuse