Comparison of groundwater composition from the Monturaqui and Punta Negra Basins, northern Chile: implications for porphyry copper exploration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Groundwaters recovered from the Salar de Punta Negra and Monturaqui basins in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile exhibit distinctly different isotopic, major, trace, and porphyry copper elemental compositions related to contrasting morphostructural, geochemical, and hydrodynamic settings. Comparison of these distinct groundwater signatures with groundwaters from known porphyry copper deposits (Salar de Hamburgo and Spence Deposit), can be used to determine if either basin might be prospective for porphyry copper mineralization. Groundwaters within the Punta Negra Basin exhibit geochemical characteristics consistent with other closed basin settings throughout the arid Andes. Elemental and isotopic compositions within the Punta Negra Basin reflect closed basin evaporitic processes consistent with the hyperarid, volcanic setting of the central Andes. Pathfinder metals and isotopic compositions are not consistent with porphyry copper type mineralization as described for groundwaters within the Salar de Hamburgo Basin, and the Spence Deposit. Within the Monturaqui Basin the geochemical composition of groundwaters are characteristic of diffuse hydrothermal activity. Sulfur isotopic composition within the waters of the northern Monturaqui Basin exhibit <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi>δ</mml:mi> </mml:math> 34 S CDT isotopic signatures that fall within the range for sulfide mineralization as reported for groundwaters in and around the Spence Deposit and the Salar de Hamburgo. However, porphyry copper related elements within the Monturaqui Basin are impoverished relative to groundwaters of the Spence and Escondida Deposit. Such impoverishment in porphyry related elements, taken in conjunction with enriched <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi>δ</mml:mi> </mml:math> 13 C PDB compositions, elevated groundwater temperatures, groundwater compositions dominated by HCO 3 , SO 4 , and Si, and the proximity of the Monturaqui Basin to the current magmatic arc are consistent with a volcanic hydrothermal origin. In summary, the groundwater geochemistry of the Monturaqui and Punta Negra Basins are not indicative of porphyry copper-type mineralization. Thematic collection: This article is part of the Hydrochemistry related to exploration and environmental issues collection available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/hydrochemistry-related-to-exploration-and-environmental-issues
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 teacher head, 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".