Date: February 25, 2021 | Time: 10:00 am PST
Overview
Mercury vapor surveys have been widely used in exploration, geological mapping, and earthquake prediction. This is because Hg occurs in most types of mineral deposits and readily reduces to highly mobile Hg0 that emanates from ore bodies and via active faults, volcanoes, and geothermal zones. Low background concentrations in the atmosphere (1.2 to 1.5 ng/m3) enable detecting even weak mercury emissions above sources 100s of meters below the surface.
This webinar will briefly introduce the geochemistry of Hg, the methodology of mercury vapor surveys, and highlights of a real-time Hg vapor measuring in near-surface air on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The measurements were done using Lumex Instruments' mercury analyzer RA-915M. We will review examples of mercury vapor haloes above exposed and sediment-covered, polymetallic mineralization, and geological faults. You will learn how mercury vapor concentrations monitoring in near-surface air can instantly delineate mineralization and faults that are buried under overburden.
Speaker
Alexei Rukhlov, Ph.D.
Provincial Geochemist at the British Columbia Geological Survey
Alexei received B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from the St. Petersburg State University, taught as a Senior Lecturer there, and held a post-doctoral fellowship at Carleton University. His recent work focuses on Cordilleran carbonatites, Pb isotopes, indicator minerals, prognostic geochemistry, and mercury atmochemistry.