Massive Sulfide Deposits of the Bathurst Mining Camp, New Brunswick, and Northern Maine

The Mining and mineral processing industry is important to the Canadian economy and in 2001 contributed $35.1 billion, or 3.7 percent, to the Gross Domestic Product and employed approximately 376,000 Canadians (Minerals and Metals Sector, Natural Resources Canada). However, over the past decade, Canada’s base metal reserves have declined by more than 25 percent, and significant new discoveries will be required if Canada’s role as a major base metal producer is to be maintained into the twenty-first century. The Bathurst Mining Camp is one of Canada’s most important base metal mining districts, accounting in 2001 for 30 percent of Canada’s production of Zn, 53 percent of Pb, and 17 percent of Ag. In 1999, the Bathurst Mining Camp accounted for 32 percent of the Zn, 80 percent of the Pb, and 25 percent of the Ag reserves (Minerals and Metals Sector, Natural Resources Canada). The value of production from the Bathurst Mining Camp in 2001 exceeded $500 million and accounted for 70 percent of total mineral production in New Brunswick. Approximately 2,000 people are directly employed by the mining industry in the Bathurst Mining Camp. Without the discovery of new ore reserves, however, production will decline and will cease within about 10 yr at current production rates, and with it the principal source of economic activity in northeastern New Brunswick will also disappear. To address the major decline of mineral resources in Canada’s economically important mining districts, EXTECH (Exploration and Technology) projects were established by the Geological Survey of Canada. EXTECH-II is a multidisciplinary, integrated and collaborative project that has focused on the Bathurst Mining Camp with four principal objectives: (1) update and expand the geoscience knowledge base, (2) develop and test new and improved methods of exploring for massive sulfide deposits, (3) conduct ground and airborne, geophysical and geochemical surveys to identify new exploration targets, and (4) build a multiparameter, comprehensive, coregistered, and internally consistent digital geoscience database of the entire Camp. Although EXTECH-II was initiated by the Geological Survey of Canada in 1994, it was a collaborative project involving earth scientists from the Geological Survey of Canada, the Department of Natural Resources and Energy of New Brunswick, universities, and mining and exploration companies. A similar multidisciplinary project was established at about the same time by the U.S. Geological Survey to study the well-preserved Bald Mountain Cu-Zn-Ag-Au massive sulfide deposit in northern Maine. This project, which began in 1995 and ended in 1999, also included selected research on the Mount Chase Zn-Pb-Cu-Ag-Au deposit 70 km to the south of Bald Mountain.

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