Abitibi greenstone belt

Tags: archean gneiss greenstone belt schist

Description:

Abitibi greenstone belt of the Superior province of the Canadian Shield. The area consists mostly of felsic to mafic volcanic rocks of Archean age together with related dioritic sills which are concordant to the regional rock formations. These volcanic and intrusive rocks have generally been metamorphosed to the greenschist facies.

The Superior Province is the largest exposed Archean craton in the world and hosts several world class gold deposits. It has yielded nearly 300 million ounces of gold from hundreds of deposits since the beginning of the twentieth century. One prominent characteristic of all significant gold deposits in the Superior Province is their occurrence within or immediately adjacent to greenstone belts. Another characteristic is their occurrence within major tectonic zones which comprise a series of shear zones (Colvine et al., 1988). The Superior Province is divided into four major subprovince types (Card and Ciesielski, 1986): volcano-plutonic, plutonic, metasedimentary, and high metamorphic grade gneiss. The boundaries of these subprovinces are either major dextral, transcurrent, east-striking faults, or zones of structural and metamorphic transition.

The greenstone belts which host the gold deposits occur as east-north-easterly trending ribbon domains in the volcano-plutonic terrains. They typically consist of mafic to ultramafic and felsic metavolcanic rocks, interlayered with metasedimentary rocks. The supracrustal rocks were intruded by syn-volcanic plutons. Saturated and under saturated felsic to mafic igneous rocks intruded into the greenstone belts in late Archean.

The metamorphic grade of most of the present greenstone terrains ranges from sub-greenschist to greenschist facies in the centre, to lower amphibolite facies at the margin. Amphibolite facies contact metamorphic aureoles occur around intrusions into the greenstones (Jolly 1978, 1980) with the exception of the synvolcanic ones.

Deposits

• Name: Wasamac

  Phase: None

  Mine Type: None

  Intro:

  The Wasamac property is located approximately 15 km west-southwest of Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, Canada, within the central portion of the Abitibi gold mining district. Rouyn-Noranda is serviced by daily flights to Montreal. The Property is accessed from Provincial Highway 117 that links Rouyn-Noranda and the community of Arntfield. A secondary road (Rang des Cavaliers) leads directly to the property from Provincial Highway 117.

  detailed

Mineralizations

No mineralizations available.

Placers

No placers available.