NEW HORIZONS (February 18, 2008)

The U.S. Geological Survey has announced the 2008 recipients of the Mineral Resources External Research Program grant.

The $250,000 grant, to be divided three ways, is aimed at encouraging minerals research. The grant will go towards three distinct studies.

The first, comparing old and new deposits, will be conducted by Mark Barton, Lukas Zrcher, and Eric Seedoff of the University of Arizona.

The study will look at the formation of mineral systems in the Basin and Range province of Arizona and Nevada.

Comparing the areas will provide a new perspectve on deposit characteristics in the region. Results are expected to improve analysis of undiscovered mineral resources in the western United States and northern Mexico.

The second study, to be prepared and executed by Jean Cline and Harold Lledo of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will investigate the formation of gold deposits. For the purpose of the study, research will be conducted in the Searchlight mining district of Nevada, which hosts extensive gold deposits.

Because of the unique nature of the deposit — it’s tilted on its side, allowing a better look at its magmatic roots — the district will serve the research well.

The team will investigate the potential existence of a relationship between the intrusion of magma and the formation of overlying gold deposits in the region.

Their findings will help advance understanding of how these types of mineral systems relate to intrusive and volcanic processes. It will also improve accuracy of assessing undiscovered resources associated with this type of mineralization.

The final grant goes to Paul O’Sullivan and Raymond Donelick of Apatite to Zircon Inc., in Viola, Idaho, for a study on copper faulting and uplift.

O’Sullivan and Donelick will examine the Pebble gold-copper deposit in southwest Alaska.

The deposit is potentially one of the largest deposits of its type in the world and the team hopes to document the timing and of the deposit’s faulting and uplift movement, both before and after the mineral deposit was formed.

Their study will help improve methods for exploring concealed mineral resources in frontier regions of Alaska, which, much like Pebble, are located under younger rocks and surface material.