Quantitative relationships among giant deposits of metals

University of Manitoba, Department of Geological Sciences, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Metallogenic studies that try to identify the geochemical fluxes of metals in the lithosphere leading to ore formation have a higher sensitivity when the traditional mining data, based on grades and tonnages, are normalized to crustal element abundances, and derivative units such as clarke of concentration and tonnage accumulation index are used. This technique has been applied to the world-class deposits of all industrial metals, i.e., to 34 metals plus the rare earth elements and platinoid groups. The lower magnitude limits for inclusion in the giant and supergiant categories (ore metal content in a deposit/metal clarke >1X10 ¹¹ metric tons (t) and 10 ¹² t of average crustal material, respectively) have been established for each metal. There are, presently, 486 giant and 61 supergiant metal accumulations of the various metals in 446 deposits and districts.

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