Mon

6 May

Summer Field Activities

 

The summer field season is upon us and most members of the department are beginning to leave for the field:

Dr. Michael Lesher, PhD student Heather Carson, and MSc students Naghmeh Farhangi, Kaveh Mehrmanesh, and Charles Spath will be doing field work for their study of the geology, geochemistry and petrogenesis of Cr and Ni-Cu-PGE mineralization in the Black Thor ultramafic intrusive complex in the McFaulds Greenstone Belt ("Ring of Fire") in northern Ontario. Dr. Lesher and Heather will also be vising the geologically-similar Kemi mine in Finland in August and presenting preliminary results of their work on Black Thor at the SGA Biennial Meeting in Uppsala. Dr. Lesher, Adjunct Professor Dr. Peter Lightfoot, and BSc Honours student Joseph Walker will also be doing field work for their study of the mineralogy, geochemistry, and petrogenesis of Opx-Rich "Black" Norite in the South Range of the Sudbury Igneous Complex.

Dr. Michael Schindler and BSc Honours student Jaime Caplette will continue this summer their work on black rock coatings in the Sudbury and Rouyn-Noranda area. They will also explore whether severe atmospheric-rock interactions have occurred around the Pb-Zn smelter of Trail, BC. Dr. Schindler will go for a three months sabbatical leave to Virginia Tech (USA) in order to characterize nanoparticles in environmental samples with Transmission Electron Microscopy.

Dr. Richard Smith, BSc Honours student Melissa-Jane Pecman, and Exchange Student Maximilien Guillot will be measuring the density, conductivity, magnetic susceptibility and the gamma ray signature of drill core from the Victoria Property (KGHM). The intention is to compare this data with downhole logging data and to determine what geologically significant information can be extracted.

Dr. Phil Thurston will be supervising PhD student Blandine Gourcerol, who is working on the geochemistry of gold-mineralized banded iron formation. Field work will take place at the Meliadine property of Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd in the Hearn domain of the Churchill Province. He will also do some work on the iron formations at the Musselwhite mine area in the North Caribou terrane of the Superior Province. There willalso be work on the iron formations at Moose Mountain and Wawa.

Dr. Douglas Tinkham will be in the Snow Lake region of Manitoba investigating metamorphosed hydrothermal alteration zoning, regional metamorphic P-T-t history, and with MSc student Judy Lam will be studying metal mobility during metamorphism at the Lalor deposit.