Stream sediment exploration for gold and silver in Nevada — application of an old prospecting method using modern analytical techniques

Zinc, copper, nickel, and arsenic monitoring in natural streams using in-situ iron–manganese oxide coated stream pebbles

“…Since then, rock coatings have been used to find mineral deposits (Huelin et al, 2006;Robinson, 1983). Previous in-situ and laboratory experiments have successfully demonstrated the use of stream sediments, iron, and manganese oxide coated quartz pebbles, ceramic plates, or limonite chips as source location indicators of elements suitable for mining (Carpenter, 1975;Huelin et al, 2006;Tingley and Castor, 1999;Zumlot et al, 2009). These methods trace the location of mineralized deposits by analyzing the geochemistry of the substrate or pebble coatings in a stream and following the geochemical signal upstream.…”

“…Fine-grained sediments record elemental concentrations within their crystal structure as well as elements sorbed to the crystal or amorphous surface. Sequential extraction is sometimes necessary to quantify which phase a metal is associated with or a total digestion to analyze the whole rock geochemistry (Dong et al, 2002;Soares et al, 1999;Tingley and Castor, 1999).…”