The University of British Columbia

The sheer size of Carlin gold deposits required massive fluid flux through ore-hosting carbonate rocks, and through the dominantly siliciclastic rocks overlying these deposits. Identifying hydrothermal fluid pathways through which fluid escaped, using clay geothermometry, stable isotope and lithogeochemical signatures, offers a direct vector back toward mineralization. The field area for this study is the region around the Pipeline deposit located in the Battle-Mountain Eureka mineral belt, Nevada. Rocks exposed at surface in this region are predominantly part of the Roberts Mountain allochthon; a lower Paleozoic shallow marine sequence (containing carbonate horizons) that overlies lower Paleozoic autochthonous carbonate shelf sediments.  The strategic goal of this MSc. project is to trace the physio-chemical expression of low temperature hydrothermal fluid from a site of gold mineralization to a site of fluids expulsion.