Interaction between karst terrain and bauxites: evidence from Quaternary orebody distribution in Guangxi, SW China

Yang, Lin, Wang, Qingfei, Zhang, Qizuan, Carranza, Emmanuel John M., Liu, Huan, Liu, Xuefei, and Deng, Jun (2017) Interaction between karst terrain and bauxites: evidence from Quaternary orebody distribution in Guangxi, SW China. Scientific Reports, 7.

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Abstract

Most bauxite in China is located upon the karst surface, yet the relation between karstification process and bauxite formation is barely known. Here we discuss how the relation affects the karst and bauxite evolution through analyzing distributions of orebody parameters from 9,007 exploration wells (434 orebodies) in western Guangxi, South China block. In high-elevation karst terrain dominated by peaks, orebodies have greater average thickness, lower Al2O3 and higher Fe2O3T than those in low-elevation region dominated by depressions. Principal component and multifractal analyses show that the Al2O3, Fe2O3T and LOI and the orebody thickness, determined by depression geometry, have more even distributions in high-elevation terrain. This explains that the interaction between the oxidized, alkaline water in karst surface and the ferrous clay minerals that released H+ during bauxite secondary weathering was more intensive in high-elevation terrain than in low-elevation one. The interaction with self-organized nature is considered responsible for the even development of karstic depressions and bauxite orebody thicknesses in high-elevation terrain. In comparison, SiO2 distribution is more even in low-elevation terrain, where connected depressions near the phreatic zone facilitated SiO2 mobilization and even distribution.

Item ID: 51123
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2045-2322
Additional Information:

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Funders: National Key Basic Research Development Program (NKBRDP), National Key Research and Development Plan of China (NKRDP), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC)
Projects and Grants: NKBRDP 2015CB452606, NKRDP 2016YFC0600307, NNSFC 41230311, NNSFC 41172295, NNSFC 40872068
Date Deposited: 11 Oct 2017 07:39
FoR Codes: 37 EARTH SCIENCES > 3705 Geology > 370508 Resource geoscience @ 100%
SEO Codes: 97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970104 Expanding Knowledge in the Earth Sciences @ 100%
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