Estudio mineralógico y geoquímico del fondo marino entre la Isla de Chiloé y Península de Taitao para la caracterización de los recursos minerales y evaluación del potencial de la Zona Exclusiva Económica de Chile

Responsables:  Marcelo García Godoy (PhD y geólogo)

Institución: Advanced Mining Technology Center, Universidad de Chile.

Financiamiento: Programa CIMAR (versión 24), CONA, Armada de Chile.

Duración: 2018-2020

Sitio web: (no tiene)

The interest for submarine mineral resources in deep zones of the world has rapidly increased with the geological knowledge, the depletion of resources in land, and the advances in the technologies for exploring and exploiting such resources. The Chilean Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is five times larger than the continental area, but the information on its mineral resources is strongly scare and scarce. Indications of Fe-Mn nodules and crusts and phosphorites have been mentioned. In the Chiloé-Taitao continental region crop out mainly Upper Paleozoic-Triassic metamorphic rocks and Mesozoic-Cenozoic intrusive rocks; in the Coyhaique area, Cretaceous marine calcareous rocks host the Zn-Pb(-Au) El Toqui skarn deposit. The metamorphic rocks have been interpreted as the source of the detrital gold exploited in placers of the Valdivia area (eg., Madre de Dios placers). For this project, in the existent submarine canyons, we expect to find anomalies in heavy minerals (as gold, platinum and titanium) and in the continental shelf, we hope to find indications of Fe-Mn deposits or hydrocarbon deposits. The general objective of the project is to improve the knowledge on the mineral resources of the seabed and to initiate a geological database for evaluation of the potential of the Chilean EEZ. Specific objectives are to collect around 20 grab (or corer) samples, at depth from 100 to 3,000 m, and characterize the mineralogy of these samples, including different fractions and heavy mineral concentrates (especially gold), to determine the geochemical composition to establish anomalies and background values, and to correlate the information with the Geology of the continental area. The samples will be submitted to petrographic, chalcographic, XR, SWIR, NIR, FTIR, multi-element ICP-MS and on-fire analyses.