Mineral Physics Commons^™

Circum-Arctic Mineralogy & Pan-Arctic Chronostratigraphy Of Late Pleistocene Sediments: Developing A Comprehensive Age Model For The Western Arctic Ocean Using Unique Ice-Rafted Signals, Wesley Blake Myers

OES Theses and Dissertations

To improve understanding of geographic mineral distribution from the circum-Arctic Ocean, samples from the Arctic periphery were collected and analyzed for (semi-) quantitative mineral composition. Most samples were collected from the North American region of the Arctic Ocean, a region which has had limited mineral investigation. In addition, more than 1000 published clay mineral data points were gathered to provide the most comprehensive clay mineral distribution map to date. The identification of a smectite source within the Canadian Arctic may reduce the usefulness of this mineral as a unique provenance signal for the Eurasian region. Smectite speciation may be useful …

Analysis Of Lunar Basalt Flows In Oceanus Procellarum Using Clementine Data, Noel William Jackson

OES Theses and Dissertations

Remote sensing analyses of data set taken by Clementine in 1994 permit new observations about mineral distribution on the lunar surface, basalt flow stratigraphy, and thus the geologic evolution of the Moon. The northern section of Oceanus Procellarum contains numerous impact craters which penetrated the basalt and thus can be used as natural probes to estimate the number and thicknesses of flows.

I constructed a mosaic taken in three frequencies ( 415 nm, 750 nm, 950 nm), and a Ratio Image (750/415 = red, 750/950 = green, 415/750 = blue). On such an image, red indicates the iron-poor mature highland …

Fluid Inclusion Studies Of The Morefield Pegmatite Amelia County, Virginia, John Richard Smerekanicz

OES Theses and Dissertations

The Morefield Pegmatite is a planar, nearly vertical body situated in Grenville age gneisses and schists in the southeast Piedmont of Virginia. It consists of a mineralogically simple albite-quartz outer zone and a texturally and mineralogically complex inner zone of microcline-topaz-quartz, with trace amounts of rare-element minerals. Fluid inclusions in samples of quartz, topaz, beryl, spessartite and albite that span the length, width and depth of both zones can be classified by chemical composition into two main groups: H₂O-rich solutions and CO₂- H₂O -rich fluids. The H₂O -rich inclusions consist of H …

Depositional Model For The Auriferous Gravels In The Payan Mining District Department Of Narino, Columbia, South America, Jim R. Garrett

OES Theses and Dissertations

Unlike placer deposits in arid and semi-arid environments where gold concentration is closely tied to the position of the bedrock, Payan placer deposits have no association with bedrock. Gold concentration values show highest gold concentrations occur at the contact of a coarse sand unit and its underlying gravel unit. Comparisons of the size and shape distributions of gold grain populations with their associated black sand populations indicate the gold and black sand were not deposited in hydraulic equilibrium. The mean size of each gold population is consistently coarser than the mean size of its associated black sand population despite the …

Analysis Of Heavy Minerals In Arenaceous Lutites From The Northern Canada Basin, Arctic Ocean, Kim Zauderer

OES Theses and Dissertations

Heavy minerals from arenaceous lutites in three widely spaced cores from the northern Canada Basin were analyzed for the first time to determine the provenance of these sediments. The abundant minerals (sp. gr. == 2.70) in decreasing order for most samples were detrital carbonate, micas, clinoamphibole, clinopyroxene, garnet, epidote, tourmaline, and chlorite. The majority of pyroxene grains were etched. Sedimentary sources dominated and metamorphic and igneous sources were important but secondary. The northern Canada Arctic Archipelago and northern Greenland is proposed as the provenance for the heavy minerals in the arenaceous lutites for at least the past three million years. …

Heavy Mineral Distribution In The Lower Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, Frances Firek

OES Theses and Dissertations

Heavy minerals from 195 bottom sediment samples of the lower Chesapeake Bay, Virginia have been studied. In comparison with other areas such as the Gulf of Mexico, qualitative and qualitative mineralogical variations were subdued, because of the absence of widely divergent source areas. The effect of present-day drainage system on the mineralogical distribution patterns is not clear, largely because of the complex Pleistocene history of the study area.

Seven geographic provinces were defined and treated statistically. An analysis of variance was conducted on the seven provinces. The more significant mineral species from the study area are zircon, hornblende, pyroxene, and …