Developing the Full Potential of the Large Igneous Province (LIP) Record for Multi-Commodity, Multi-Scale Exploration Targeting: The LIPs Industry

Summary

  • Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) are huge volume, short duration volcanic/intrusive events that occur every 20-30 million years  throughout Earth history (including into the Archean) and which rival plate tectonics in geodynamic importance. They comprise volcanic packages (flood basalts), and a plumbing system of dyke swarms, sill complexes, layered intrusions, and a crustal underplate. LIPs can also be associated with silicic magmatism (including dominantly silicic events termed Silicic LIPs, or SLIPs), carbonatites and kimberlites.
  • LIPs have become an important research focus because they help reveal the configuration of ancient (Pre-Pangea) supercontinents, provide insights into volcanism on other planets, have caused dramatic climate change including mass extinctions throughout Earth history, and have become a significant tool in resource exploration, particularly for many Critical Minerals.
  • This LIP-Industry Consortium Project (with matching funding from the Canadian NSERC grants) provides our Industry Partners a dramatic expansion of the LIP record with application to resource exploration for a wide range of commodity types: including orthomagmatic ore deposits such as Ni-Cu-PGE and Nb-Ta-REE (in associated carbonatites), but also hydrothermal ores linked to fluids and heat released from LIPs, as well as orogenic ores (e.g. gold), that can be correlated with distal compression linked to mantle plume/LIP-induced continental breakup.
  • Themes of our current 2018-2024 LIPs Project have built on previous 2010-2015 and 2016-2017 Industry-supported projects , and currently comprises 5 themes: paleomagnetism, geochemistry, U-Pb geochronology, geospatial data consolidation and data processing (including a global LIPs geodatabase) and LIP architecture.  
  • This research will benefit Canada because resource exploration is a global effort, and targeting insights developed in any region using the LIP record can have wide applicability elsewhere, including within Canada. So an important prospecting tool is to trace known important ore deposits into  crustal blocks (in Canada or elsewhere) that were formerly adjacent. 
  • For more information on participating in the LIPs Industry Consortium, as either a additional Industry Partner or as a member of the Project Team, contact: Dr. Richard Ernst (Richard.Ernst@Carleton.ca ).