Western Mineral Resources
Tonnage of porphyry copper deposits versus average copper grades (from figure 1).
This report is an update of earlier publications about porphyry copper deposits (Singer, Berger, and Moring, 2002; Singer, D.A., Berger, V.I., and Moring, B.C., 2005). The update was necessary because of new information about substantial increases in resources in some deposits and because we revised locations of some deposits so that they are consistent with images in Google Earth. In this report we have added new porphyry copper deposits and removed a few incorrectly classed deposits. In addition, some errors have been corrected and a number of deposits have had some information, such as grades, tonnages, locations, or ages revised. Colleagues have helped identify places where improvements were needed. Mineral deposit models are important in exploration planning and quantitative resource assessments for a number of reasons including: (1) grades and tonnages among deposit types are significantly different, and (2) many types occur in different geologic settings that can be identified from geologic maps. Mineral deposit models are the keystone in combining the diverse geoscience information on geology, mineral occurrences, geophysics, and geochemistry used in resource assessments and mineral exploration. Too few thoroughly explored
mineral deposits are available in most local areas for reliable identification of the important geoscience variables or for robust estimation of undiscovered deposits—thus we need mineral-deposit models. Globally based deposit models allow recognition of important features because the global models demonstrate how common different features are. Well-designed and -constructed deposit models allow geologists to know from observed geologic environments the possible mineral deposit types that might exist, and allow economists to determine the possible economic viability of these resources in the region. Thus, mineral deposit models play the central role in transforming geoscience information to a form useful to policy makers. The foundation of mineral deposit models is information about known deposits. The purpose of this publication is to make this kind of information available in digital form for porphyry copper deposits. The consistently defined deposits in this file provide the foundation for grade and tonnage models included here and for mineral deposit density models (Singer and others, 2005: Singer, 2008).
Download the text of this report as a 45-page PDF file. (of2008-1155.pdf; 456 kB).
go to the data folder (9 files; 6.5 MB total). See the text (linked above) for explanation of files in this data folder.
For questions about the content of this report, contact Don Singer.
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| Publications | Western Open-File Reports for 2008 |
| Geology Disipline | Western Mineral Resources
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This report is availalbe only on the Web
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1155/
Page Contact Information: Michael Diggles
Page Last Modified: June 20, 2008
