18O/16O Evidence for Contrasting Hydrothermal Regimes Involving Magmatic and Meteoric-Hydrothermal Waters at the Valhalla Metamorphic Core Complex, British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Modeling of published oxygen isotope analyses of 115 whole-rock, quartz, and feldspar samples from the Valhalla metamorphic core complex provides evidence for three distinct stages of hydrothermal activity affecting the detachment faults and upper plate. (1) Lithostatically pressured aqueous fluids having δ¹⁸O ~10 per mil were expelled from the lower plate and moved upward into the upper plate through an oblique-sinistral transfer zone between the southern terminus of the Columbia River detachment fault and the northern terminus of the Slocan Lake detachment fault. These fluids ascended through fractures and exchanged with Slocan Group shales and graywackes to produce the marked zonation of vein siderite δ¹⁸O (11.4–18.4‰) observed in previous studies of the Sandon group of Ag-Pb-Zn lode deposits. (2) Later, as brittle deformation along the Slocan Lake detachment fault became the dominant tectonic process, these magmatic and/or metamorphic fluids intermittently mixed with even larger quantities of downward circulating, hydrostatically pressured meteoric-hydrothermal fluids. In the upper plate Nelson granodiorite adjacent to the Slocan Lake detachment fault, δ¹⁸O values of quartz (8.9–11.9‰) and feldspar (−5.0 to +9.6‰) define a steep array in δ-δ space (slope = 25), suggesting that synextensional meteoric-hydrothermal activity along the Slocan Lake detachment fault (initial δ¹⁸Owater ~−15‰ and T ~300°C) was relatively short-lived (~10⁶ yr), but very intense, with W/R_(open-system) = ≤1.05 and fluid flux = 0.1 to 3 m/yr. The δ¹⁸O values of quartz (10.8–12.4‰) and feldspar (6.4–10.1‰) from lower plate greenschist mylonites indicate that small quantities of the low ¹⁸O meteoric-hydrothermal fluids penetrated into the lower plate. The systematic decrease in feldspar δ¹⁸O toward the Slocan Lake detachment fault in both the upper and lower plates shows that these low ¹⁸O waters were channeled along the detachment fault. (3) Meteoric-hydrothermal activity along the Valkyr shear zone postdates ductile deformation and was associated with the emplacement of the Coryell plutons in the upper plate. The δ¹⁸O values of quartz (7.6–11.0‰) and feldspar (0.0–8.6‰) from the Valkyr shear zone define a much shallower array in δ-δ space (slope = 2.3) than those at the Slocan Lake detachment fault, indicating a higher temperature and/or longer lived episode of hydrothermal activity. The geographic distribution of pronounced disequilibrium δ¹⁸O effects in Coryell quartz (5.8–8.2‰) and feldspar (−4.4 to +7.4‰) indicates that meteoric-hydrothermal activity was most intense along inferred coeval extensional fracture zones that lie beneath Arrow Lake. This modeling suggests that transfer zones that accommodate deformation between detachment faults may be a very attractive exploration setting for lode-type mineral deposits.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".