Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Industrial metals such as copper and zinc are critical to everyday life and have long been a significant component of Canada's economy. Undiscovered ore deposits that are partly exposed at Earth's surface and comparatively easy to find are now rare, and mineral exploration must shift focus to buried ('blind') resources that will be the future's sources of metals. Developing intelligent and efficient ways to find blind ore deposits will require investing in understanding how and why ore deposits form where they do. This project will advance the understanding of where and why a major type of base-metal deposit forms, using two exceptional copper and zinc deposits as case studies. The Central African Copperbelt (CACB) in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia has been known and exploited for centuries, but the timing of mineralising events and the ultimate source of the enormous volume of base metals in the district have proven difficult to resolve; a unified geological history of the district and explanation for its world-class endowment remain elusive. This project will address the origin, controls on, and broader implications of two understudied world-class sediment-hosted base-metal deposits in DRC: Kipushi and Kamoa. In doing so, this project will contribute to the understanding of the dominant controls on these types of sediment-hosted ore system globally, including related districts in northwestern Canada, and will train five graduate students, one post-doctoral fellow, and two undergraduate students.