Gold metallogeny and exploration

Book excerpt: Within the last decade, the high and continuing demand for gold has prompted a global gold rush on a scale never before seen, not even in the heady days of Ballarat, California and the Yukon. Gold is being sought on every continent and, with very few exceptions, in every country around the world. Such interest and fierce competition has demanded considerable innovation and improvement in exploration techniques paralleled by a rapid expansion of the geological database and consequent genetic modelling for the many different types of gold deposits now recognized. This proliferation of data has swamped the literature and left explorationist and academic alike unable to sift more than a small proportion of the accumulating information. This new book represents an attempt to address this major problem by providing succinct syntheses ofall major aspects ofgold metallogeny and exploration, ranging from the chemical distribution of gold in the Earth's crust, and the hydrothermal chemistry of gold, to Archaean and Phanerozoic lode deposits, epithermal environments, chemical sediments, and placer deposits, and culminates in chapters devoted to geochemical and geophysical exploration, and the economics of gold deposits. Each chapter is written by geoscientists who are acknowledged internationally in their respective fields, thus guaranteeing a broad yet up-to-date coverage. In addition, each chapter is accompanied by reference lists which provide readers with access to the most pertinent and useful publications.