lake cowan geology and exploration

Hello all,

Maybe time to start an new thread. With exploration hopefully underway on Lake Cowan I am looking at factual data and happy to share some work I found.

I offer no opinion here, it is technical so some may choose not to tackle this one.

Source: http://crcleme.org.au/Pubs/Monographs/regolith98/12-carey%26dusci.pdf

Conclusions
Lake Lefroy represents a series of superimposed landforms whose history dates from the pre-Eocene. The complicated sub-surface regolith stratigraphy and palaeolandscape were formed by a combination of differential erosion, deposition and chemical modification.

The use of detailed case studies of known deposits has resulted in a comprehensive understanding of various controls on gold dispersion within the regolith, which include: position of iron redox fronts; style of primary mineralisation; bedrock lithologies; degree of erosion; and thickness of transported cover.

Proximal to a bedrock source supergene gold is usually focused at the base of weathering, but distal to mineralisation, dispersion of supergene gold is controlled by iron redox fronts located higher in the regolith profile.

The bedrock geology and style of mineralisation have prominent effects on regolith development and supergene dispersion, with for example, limited weathering over felsic intrusive lithologies and silicified stockworks thus restricting supergene dispersion.

This knowledge has been applied in interpretation of the processed regional scale data, resulting in the discovery of additional resources.

Innovative processing schemes and data. Visualisation tools
have been employed to allow management of a large data
set, providing optimal targeting and prospect prioritisation.

The most effective of these schemes is the calculation of
summed gram x metre intersections for the archaean
regolith within each aircore hole. These values represents the undiluted grade and thickness of drill hole gold anomalies WMC Resources is continually trying and implementing new techniques, as well as further developing methods to deal with aircore drilling data. Experimental techniques successfully tried include airborne EM and enzyme leach.

The continual advancements of such techniques and knowledge
of the regolith and gold dispersion will lead to the discovery of further gold deposits in covered terrains.

END

I will leave it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Best regards,
CW
DYOR&DD