ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Economic Geology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1485901
This article is part of the Research TopicExploration, Development, and Protection of Earth’s Resources and Environment: Methods, Techniques, Applications, Prospects, Insights, and ProblemsView all 45 articles
Fluid inclusion and H-O-S isotopes constraints on the genesis of the Ashawayi gold deposit, Southern Tianshan, Xinjiang, NW China
Provisionally accepted
- China Geological Survey, Beijing, China
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The Ashawayi gold deposit is situated in the eastern part of the Southern Tianshan Sb-Hg-Au metallogenic belt, an significant source of gold in China. This deposit exhibits typical disseminated mineralization controlled by faults or fractures. This study presents a comprehensive set of petrological, fluid inclusion, and H-O-S isotopic data for the deposit. Fluid inclusions can be calssified into three main types: NaCl-H2O, CO2-bearing aqueous solutions, and pure CO2 inclusions.The quartz from the ore contains fluid inclusions predominantly composed of NaCl-H2O and CO2.The homogenization temperatures of these inclusions range from 360 to 200℃. Estimates based on fluid inclusion pressures suggest that mineralization occurred at depths of approximately 2-4 km.Mineralization is associated with fault healing and fracturing, which induce secondary fluid immiscibility. Fluid boiling features indicate rapid upwelling of ore fluids from depth, with metal precipitation occurring through decompression at shallower levels. H-O-S isotopes suggest that metals were extracted from the country rock, and that the ores were formed through the mixing of metamorphic fluids with meteoric water. A combined analysis classifies the Ashawayi gold deposit as a hypabyssal orogenic gold deposit.
Keywords: fluid inclusions, H-O-S isotopes, Ashawayi gold deposit, Orogenic gold deposit, Southern Tianshan
Received: 25 Aug 2024; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Chen, Xing, Wang and Zhao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hui Chen, China Geological Survey, Beijing, China
Wanli Xing, China Geological Survey, Beijing, China
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