Economic Geology Journal

[Lavonna Baldree]

Thestudy is primarily focused on metallic mineral deposits and mineral resources. The techniques employed by other Earth science disciplines (such as geochemistry, mineralogy, geophysics, petrology, paleontology and structural geology) might all be used to understand, describe and exploit an ore deposit.[citation needed]

Economic geology is studied and practiced by geologists. Economic geology may be of interest to other professions such as engineers, environmental scientists and conservationists because of the far-reaching impact that extractive industries have on society, the economy and the environment.

The purpose of the study of economic geology is to gain understanding of the genesis and localization of ore deposits plus the minerals associated with ore deposits.[2] Though metals, minerals and other geologic commodities are non-renewable in human time frames, the impression of a fixed or limited stock paradigm of scarcity has always led to human innovation resulting in a replacement commodity substituted for those commodities which become too expensive. Additionally the fixed stock of most mineral commodities is huge (e.g., copper within the Earth's crust given current rates of consumption would last for more than 100 million years.)[3] Nonetheless, economic geologists continue to successfully expand and define known mineral resources.[citation needed]

Mineral resources are concentrations of minerals significant for current and future societal needs. Ore is classified as mineralization economically and technically feasible for extraction. Not all mineralization meets these criteria for various reasons. The specific categories of mineralization in an economic sense are:

Geologists are involved in the study of ore deposits, which includes the study of ore genesis and the processes within the Earth's crust that form and concentrate ore minerals into economically viable quantities.[citation needed]

Study of metallic ore deposits involves the use of structural geology, geochemistry, the study of metamorphism and its processes, as well as understanding metasomatism and other processes related to ore genesis.[citation needed]

Ore deposits are delineated by mineral exploration, which uses geochemical prospecting, drilling and resource estimation via geostatistics to quantify economic ore bodies. The ultimate aim of this process is mining.[citation needed]

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I went onto say in my post that the publication of economic geology papers with weak scientific arguments have been going on for decades (since the 1960s) and that many of the problematic papers are model-driven which I regard as pseudoscientific.

By pseudoscience, I mean interpretations that cannot be falsified because there is no practical way of testing them. Most of these papers leave out critical observations and focus their interpretations based around conceptual ideas created by previous workers, which themselves are not anchored on solid observations that are made in the field. They remain theoretical and they cannot make useful predictions that can be tested, or falsified. If an interpretation cannot be falsified, we are dealing not with science, but pseudoscience and I discussed the concept of falsification (Popper, 1959) in the introductory post to this series.

This article is all about this video that I just made reviewing the most recent open access VMS article that anyone can access (DeWolfe et al 2024), so that you can follow my arguments by going through the paper yourself. I also provide links to all of the papers mentioned in this discussion in the reference list, below. Let me know what you think of my analysis, and I welcome any constructive criticisms.

As my video analysis demonstrates, DeWolfe et al (2024) shows a clear preference for the VMS model and focused on the conjectural existence of "synvolcanic faults" that purportedly acted as hydrothermal fluid pathways. The paper builds on previous studies that also speculate about these elusive synvolcanic faults described from many ancient VMS papers, but I have not found a single study that provide a clear and convincing example of such a fault system. Faults, if they do exist, in papers that I've reviewed, make more sense as being formed during the late stages of the orogenic cycle and not before deformation.

I conclude that the only way I can get a response to my concerns outlined in this article is by writing to the Editor of Economic Geology as a discussion article of DeWolfe et al (2024). I normally don't do this, as there are so many flawed papers that are missing key observations that are published each year, and I would be spending all of my spare time writing discussion of articles! Leave your thoughts in the comments section whether I should follow this up formally through the journal.

For working geologists who are keen to learn the basic principles of structural geological analysis of mineral deposits using your own drilling data, I have a two-day workshop that your company might be interested in sponsoring. I focus on practical outcomes, and there are no speculative bandwagon concepts in my workshop, but only pure data analysis! The workshop is detailed in my last LinkedIn article. If this is of interest, please message me on LinkedIn or email me at j...@juncowan.com.

Gibson, H.L., Morton, R.L., and Hudak, G.J. 1999, Submarine volcanic processes, deposits and environments favorable for the location of volcanic-hosted massive sulfide deposits: Reviews in Economic Geology, 8, 13-51.

Jun Cowan is a structural geological consultant, specialising in interpreting mineral deposits at the deposit-scale. He is the conceptual founder of Leapfrog software, which is now used by many international mining and mineral exploration companies (Leapfrog software resulted from private R&D collaboration undertaken by a joint venture between SRK Consulting Australasia, where Jun worked, and New Zealand company, ARANZ). Out of his home in Fremantle, Western Australia, he consults to mineral industry clients around the world and enjoys sharing his crazy ideas with his clients, and with online colleagues. This and other articles, mainly focused on geological subjects, are available from LinkedIn.

SEG members can read, research, and save papers from the journal via GeoScienceWorld (GSW), which hosts the journal as part of an aggregate of geoscience journals, permitting libraries and other organizations to access an integrated group of publications at reasonable cost.

The journal, now published semi-quarterly, was first published in 1905 by the Economic Geology Publishing Company (PUBCO), a not-for-profit company established for the purpose of publishing a periodical devoted to economic geology. On the founding of SEG in 1920, a cooperative arrangement between PUBCO and SEG made the journal the official organ of the Society, and PUBCO agreed to carry the Society's name on the front cover under the heading "Bulletin of the Society of Economic Geologists". PUBCO and SEG continued to operate as cooperating but separate entities until 2001, when the Board of Directors of PUBCO and the Council of SEG, by unanimous consent, approved a formal agreement of merger. The former activities of the PUBCO Board of Directors are now carried out by a Publications Board, a new self-governing unit within SEG.

The paper "Discovery, Geology, and Origin of the Fruta del Norte Epithermal Gold-Silver Deposit, Southeastern Ecuador" published in the August 2016 issue of Economic Geology is a landmark presentation focusing on the basic tools of the economic-exploration geologist: geologic mapping, sampling, and a creative analysis of the resulting data. With an emphasis on hands-on, practical exploration tools, this approach will motivate other field-oriented geologists to submit manuscripts for publication in the journal.

Established in 1920, the Society of Economic Geologists, Inc. (SEG) is an international organization of individual members and institutional subscribers with interests in the field of economic geology. The Society's membership includes representatives from industry, academia, and government institutions. Annual conferences, publications, field trips, and courses ensure an active communication of economic geology-related concepts within the membership and with the economic geology profession at large.

GeoScienceWorld (GSW) is a nonprofit collaborative and comprehensive Internet resource for research and communications in the earth sciences, which is built on a core database of peer-reviewed journals and is integrated with the GeoRef index. The organization gives global researchers a single point of access to 46 full-text scholarly journals plus specialized searching capabilities and links to millions of relevant resources hosted elsewhere on the Web. Our mission includes an expansion into additional forms of content relevant to geoscience researchers, including books, datasets, maps, tables, images, and theses, with the further development of services that optimize the discovery and use of public and proprietary resources.

Founded in 1993, Silverchair delivers advanced semantic technologies, publishing platforms, and e-learning solutions to scientific, technical, medical, and humanities publishers; professional societies; and the federal government. Silverchair is headquartered in Charlottesville, VA.

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