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AusIMM and GSA present Professor T. Campbell McCuaig of the Centre for Exploration Targeting and ARC Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems in Kalgoorlie.
There has been a long-recognized association of major mineral deposits with large-scale structures. These structures are now recognized to be long-lived features, generally rooted in the mantle lithosphere and at the margins of old mantle lithospheric blocks. They are vertically-accretive structures, continually propagating upwards through new crust deposited or obducted over the top of them. They often have a subtle expression at the surface, but a strong expression in isotopic or geophysical datasets that image to great depth, and can be mapped at a range of scales by combining these datasets with tectonostratigraphic reconstructions of terranes. This inherited architecture can now be shown to play a role in controlling the subsequent response of the upper crust to deformation, metamorphism, fluid and magma flow, and the location and geometry of large mineral deposits in orogenic gold systems, porphyry-related precious and base metal systems, sediment-hosted systems, and orthomagmatic NiS systems, from craton/lithosphere to deposit scale.
Parallel to these advances has been a breakthrough in understanding how mass and energy transfer organizes itself in the lithosphere as self-ordered critical systems (SOCS). A key concept in SOCS is the presence of a threshold barrier (physical or geodynamic) that stops mass and energy from advecting through the crust. Under these conditions, the system goes to criticality and self-organizes, with deposits forming in the transient exit conduits above the barrier, often overwhelming the far-field stress. Application of SOCS has the potential to dramatically change how we understand and explore, in that it moves us from a deformation and chemistry-centric to an architecture and fluid physics-centric paradigm. More effective targeting requires more innovative ways to map 4D architecture at a range of scales and mapping of geochemistry onto this architecture to hunt the fluid conduits in 3D, then find the ore.
Professor Cam McCuaig received his BSc from Lakehead University in 1988, and PhD in Geology from the University of Saskatchewan in 1996. Subsequently, Cam moved to Australia, where he rose to the position of Director at SRK Consulting, garnering 10 years’ experience in providing solutions to the mineral exploration and mining industry. His experience spans six continents and numerous commodities in geological terranes ranging from Archean to Eocene in age, including gold, nickel, iron, copper, uranium, and zinc, among others. For the past eight years, Cam has been Director of the Centre for Exploration Targeting, a joint venture between the University of Western Australia, Curtin University, and the Minerals Industry that is focused on advancing the science of exploration targeting. His leadership has resulted in a world-recognized sustainable research centre with >70 corporate members, 40 staff, 32 research PhD or MSc students, a turnover of greater than $8M/yr, and research outcomes that are impacting on exploration industry practice, yet are also recognized at the highest academic levels in publications such as Nature and Science. Cam was awarded the Geological Society’s Gibb Maitland Medal in 2013 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to geoscience in Western Australia.
