Mineral Exploration in Weathered and Covered Terrains

Dear Colleagues,

Shallow mineral deposit discoveries are becoming less common, and many world-class deposits are either mined out or decreasing in production. One of the fundamental challenges for the mineral exploration industry in this century is targeting deeper concealed mineral deposits under the Critical Zone. The global increase in demand for mineral resources is driving investment in developing new geochemical tools for vectoring to concealed mineral deposits in weathered and covered terrains. Extensive older terrains of Australia, India, West Africa, Brazil, and China are deeply weathered, and others, such as Canada and Scandinavia, are overlain by recent glacial sediments. Thus, signatures of the mineralisation are obscured, providing challenges for exploring these terrains.

We aim to publish a Special Issue of the journal Minerals that presents a set of articles on “Mineral Exploration in Weathered and Covered Terrains”. The focus of the Special Issue will be on interdisciplinary integrated approaches applied to mineral exploration and targeting deeper buried minerals deposits in and through the Critical Zone. Our Special Issue will cover a broad range of relevant topics of interest, such as:

1. Landscape evolution of the sedimentary cover sequences in weathered terrains;
2. Cover mapping using geophysical hyperspectral, remote sensing techniques and machine learning;
3. Dispersion mechanisms (mechanical, hydromorphic and biological) releasing and enriching ore and pathfinder elements in the Critical Zone;
4. Laterite and supergene ore deposits;
5. Near-surface geochemical exploration techniques such as soil, vegetation and termite mounds;
6. New innovative exploration methods for vectoring toward concealed mineral deposits in weathered and covered terrains;
7. Mineral exploration in areas covered by glacial sedimentary cover using indicator mineralogy;
8. Recent advances in hydro-, bio-, isotope geochemistry applied to mineral exploration in weathered terrains.

Thank you and we look forward to receiving your contributions.
The first round of submissions deadline is 30 December 2020.

Dr. Walid Salama
Dr. Caroline Tiddy
Dr. Ryan Noble
Guest Editors

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