Critical raw material potential of porphyry copper-gold deposits in the Golden Triangle, northwest British Columbia, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• Potential for critical raw materials (CRM) to be mined as by-products. • CRM hosted by at least 58 different minerals. • Suppressed sulphide crystallization generated CRM-rich parental melts. • CRM applied as fertility indicators and exploration vectors. Porphyry deposits are major sources of copper, gold, molybdenum, and silver globally. However, the potential for critical raw materials (CRM) to be mined as by-products (e.g., antimony, bismuth, platinum group elements, and tellurium) at these deposits is poorly understood. Herein we present results from a lithogeochemical survey (n = 331), detailed mineralogy, and trace element mapping to characterize the concentrations of CRM and their deportment within the Golden Triangle, northwest British Columbia, Canada. We demonstrate that the host rocks to porphyry copper-gold (i.e., Galore Creek, Copper Canyon, KSM, Dok, Yeti, and Burgundy) and epithermal gold-silver (i.e., Brucejack) deposits were derived from oxidized and water-rich parental melts that suppressed sulphide crystallization, resulting in the pre-enrichment of CRM relative to other arc rocks globally. The structural juxtaposition, local thickening, and preservation of these prospective source rocks is likely one of the factors contributing to the mineral district’s exceptional gold and CRM endowment. Multiple analytical methods (e.g., aqua-regia, four-acid, fusion) for the same samples further demonstrate that the highest Bi (39 ppm), Pd (460 ppb), Sb (375 ppm), and Te (15 ppm) concentrations are associated with sulphide and/or other non-resistate minerals within the most hydrothermally altered samples. Detailed mineralogy and trace element mapping by laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) reveals that CRM within the Golden Triangle are hosted by at least 58 different minerals. We apply these results to estimate the contained CRM at the Galore Creek and KSM deposits and to discuss their potential to be recovered as by-products. Lithogeochemical results are also applied to predict the mineral potential of different igneous suites within the Golden Triangle based on their CRM concentrations.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 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) | 0.007 | 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".