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Boletín de la Sociedad Geológica Mexicana Volumen 72, núm. 3, P250820, 2020 |
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Special issue / Número especial
Mineral deposits of Latin America and the Caribbean. Preface
Depósitos minerales de América Latina y el Caribe. Prefacio
Joaquín A. Proenza1,*, Lisard Torró2, Carl E. Nelson3
1 Departament de Mineralogia, Petrologia i Geologia Aplicada. Facultat de Ciències de la Terra, Universitat de Barcelona. C/ Martí i Franquès, s/n, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.
2 Geological Engineering Program, Faculty of Sciences and Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), Av. Universitaria 1801, San Miguel, 15088, Lima, Peru.
3 Recursos del Caribe, S.A., 2360 23rd Street, Boulder, 80304, Colorado, United States.
* Corresponding author: (J.A. Proenza) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
How to cite this document:
Proenza, J. A., Torró, L., Nelson, C.E., 2020, Mineral deposits of Latin America and the Caribbean. Preface: Boletín de la Sociedad Geológica Mexicana, 72 (3), A250820. http://dx.doi.org/10.18268/BSGM2020v72n3p250820
Preface
The region that encompasses Latin America and the Caribbean is a preferential destination for mining and mineral exploration, according to the Mineral Commodity Summaries 2020 of the US Geological Survey (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/). The region contains important resources of copper, gold, silver, nickel, cobalt, iron, niobium, aluminum, zinc, lead, tin, lithium, chromium, and other metals. For example, Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and the second largest lithium producer. Brazil is the world’s leading niobium producer, the second largest producer of iron ore, and the third-ranked producer of tantalum. Cuba contains some of the largest reserves of nickel and cobalt in the world, associated with lateritic Ni-Co deposits. Mexico is traditionally the largest silver producer and contains the two largest mines in this commodity and, along with Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, accounts for more than half of the total amount of global silver production. The region also hosts several world-class gold mines (e.g., Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic, Paracotu in Brazil, Veladero in Argentina, and Yanacocha in Peru). Also, Bolivia and Brazil are among the world’s leading producers of tin.
The region hosts a variety of deposit types, among which the most outstanding are porphyry copper and epithermal precious metal, bauxite and lateritic nickel, lateritic iron ore from banded iron-formation, iron-oxide-copper-gold (IOCG), sulfide skarn, volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS), Mississippi Valley type (MVT), primary and weathering-related Nb-bearing minerals associated with alkaline–carbonatite complexes, tin–antimony polymetallic veins, and ophiolitic chromite.
This special issue on Mineral Deposits of Latin America and the Caribbean in the Boletín de la Sociedad Geológica Mexicana contains nineteen papers. Contributions describe mineral deposits from Mexico, Panama, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina. This volume of papers covers four mineral systems (mafic-ultramafic orthomagmatic mineral systems, porphyry-skarn-epithermal mineral systems, iron oxide copper-gold mineral systems, and surficial mineral systems). This special issue also includes papers on industrial minerals, techniques for ore discovery (predictive modelling of mineral exploration using GIS), regional metallogeny and mining history.
This is an open access document under the CC BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)
