Development of reliable proxies to distinguish significantly mineralized sedimentary basins, enhancing the likely discovery of new sediment-hosted cop

Hydrothermal ore deposits are the principal source of the world's metals. They form within fluid flow regimes which extract metals from source rocks or magmas in the Earth's crust, transport them as complexes in solution, and precipitate them in a limited rock volume. Sedimentary basins are one environment in which such processes produce giant deposits, such as the Cu-Co deposits of Central Africa which annually produces respectively 15% and 75% of these key, technology-enabling metals. However, such remarkably-endowed basins are apparently rare although many potential analogues are known. Given recent developments in theoretical, experimental and analytical geochemistry, the aim of this PhD project is to develop: (i) reliable geochemical proxies for distinguishing "fertile" sedimentary basins at the district to deposit scale, and proximity to ore; and (ii) use these data to test and refine current hypotheses for basin-scale fluid flow mechanisms and sediment-hosted ore formation, incorporating advances developed in the hydrocarbon sector.