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52-689: The Furnace Creek Fault Zone (FCFZ) is a geological fault that is located in Eastern California and southwestern Nevada. The right lateral-moving (dextral) fault extends for some 200 km (120 mi) between a connection with the Death Valley Fault Zone in the Amargosa Valley and northward to a termination in the Fish Lake Valley of southwest Nevada. The northern segment of the FCFZ

104-405: A decollement . Extensional decollements can grow to great dimensions and form detachment faults , which are low-angle normal faults with regional tectonic significance. Due to the curvature of the fault plane, the horizontal extensional displacement on a listric fault implies a geometric "gap" between the hanging and footwalls of the fault forms when the slip motion occurs. To accommodate into

156-829: A plate boundary. This class is related to an offset in a spreading center , such as a mid-ocean ridge , or, less common, within continental lithosphere , such as the Dead Sea Transform in the Middle East or the Alpine Fault in New Zealand. Transform faults are also referred to as "conservative" plate boundaries since the lithosphere is neither created nor destroyed. Dip-slip faults can be either normal (" extensional ") or reverse . The terminology of "normal" and "reverse" comes from coal mining in England, where normal faults are

208-454: A centimeter over several million years. The average diameter of a polymetallic nodule is between 3 and 10 cm (1 and 4 in) in diameter and are characterized by enrichment in iron, manganese, heavy metals , and rare earth element content when compared to the Earth's crust and surrounding sediment. The proposed mining of these nodules via remotely operated ocean floor trawling robots has raised

260-574: A fault hosting valuable porphyry copper deposits is northern Chile's Domeyko Fault with deposits at Chuquicamata , Collahuasi , El Abra , El Salvador , La Escondida and Potrerillos . Further south in Chile Los Bronces and El Teniente porphyry copper deposit lie each at the intersection of two fault systems. Faults may not always act as conduits to surface. It has been proposed that deep-seated "misoriented" faults may instead be zones where magmas forming porphyry copper stagnate achieving

312-500: A fault is locked, and when it reaches a level that exceeds the strength threshold, the fault ruptures and the accumulated strain energy is released in part as seismic waves , forming an earthquake . Strain occurs accumulatively or instantaneously, depending on the liquid state of the rock; the ductile lower crust and mantle accumulate deformation gradually via shearing , whereas the brittle upper crust reacts by fracture – instantaneous stress release – resulting in motion along

364-410: A fault often forms a discontinuity that may have a large influence on the mechanical behavior (strength, deformation, etc.) of soil and rock masses in, for example, tunnel , foundation , or slope construction. The level of a fault's activity can be critical for (1) locating buildings, tanks, and pipelines and (2) assessing the seismic shaking and tsunami hazard to infrastructure and people in

416-408: A fault's age by studying soil features seen in shallow excavations and geomorphology seen in aerial photographs. Subsurface clues include shears and their relationships to carbonate nodules , eroded clay, and iron oxide mineralization, in the case of older soil, and lack of such signs in the case of younger soil. Radiocarbon dating of organic material buried next to or over a fault shear

468-644: A number of ecological concerns. The extraction of ore deposits generally follows these steps. Progression from stages 1–3 will see a continuous disqualification of potential ore bodies as more information is obtained on their viability: With rates of ore discovery in a steady decline since the mid 20th century, it is thought that most surface level, easily accessible sources have been exhausted. This means progressively lower grade deposits must be turned to, and new methods of extraction must be developed. Some ores contain heavy metals , toxins, radioactive isotopes and other potentially negative compounds which may pose

520-477: A result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth 's crust result from the action of plate tectonic forces, with the largest forming the boundaries between the plates, such as the megathrust faults of subduction zones or transform faults . Energy release associated with rapid movement on active faults is the cause of most earthquakes . Faults may also displace slowly, by aseismic creep . A fault plane

572-413: A result of the precipitation of dissolved ore constituents out of fluids. Laterites form from the weathering of highly mafic rock near the equator. They can form in as little as one million years and are a source of iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), and aluminum (Al). They may also be a source of nickel and cobalt when the parent rock is enriched in these elements. Banded iron formations (BIFs) are

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624-824: A risk to the environment or health. The exact effects an ore and its tailings have is dependent on the minerals present. Tailings of particular concern are those of older mines, as containment and remediation methods in the past were next to non-existent, leading to high levels of leaching into the surrounding environment. Mercury and arsenic are two ore related elements of particular concern. Additional elements found in ore which may have adverse health affects in organisms include iron, lead, uranium, zinc, silicon, titanium, sulfur, nitrogen, platinum, and chromium. Exposure to these elements may result in respiratory and cardiovascular problems and neurological issues. These are of particular danger to aquatic life if dissolved in water. Ores such as those of sulphide minerals may severely increase

676-539: A sizeable portion of international trade in raw materials both in value and volume. This is because the worldwide distribution of ores is unequal and dislocated from locations of peak demand and from smelting infrastructure. Most base metals (copper, lead, zinc, nickel) are traded internationally on the London Metal Exchange , with smaller stockpiles and metals exchanges monitored by the COMEX and NYMEX exchanges in

728-536: Is also referred to as the Fish Lake Valley Fault Zone. The FCFZ is considered an integral part of the Walker Lane . This article about a specific United States geological feature is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Fault (geology) In geology , a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as

780-410: Is considered alluvial if formed via river, colluvial if by gravity, and eluvial when close to their parent rock. Polymetallic nodules , also called manganese nodules, are mineral concretions on the sea floor formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core. They are formed by a combination of diagenetic and sedimentary precipitation at the estimated rate of about

832-494: Is extracted from the earth through mining and treated or refined , often via smelting , to extract the valuable metals or minerals. Some ores, depending on their composition, may pose threats to health or surrounding ecosystems. The word ore is of Anglo-Saxon origin, meaning lump of metal . In most cases, an ore does not consist entirely of a single mineral, but it is mixed with other valuable minerals and with unwanted or valueless rocks and minerals. The part of an ore that

884-430: Is not economically desirable and that cannot be avoided in mining is known as gangue . The valuable ore minerals are separated from the gangue minerals by froth flotation , gravity concentration, electric or magnetic methods, and other operations known collectively as mineral processing or ore dressing . Mineral processing consists of first liberation, to free the ore from the gangue, and concentration to separate

936-543: Is often critical in distinguishing active from inactive faults. From such relationships, paleoseismologists can estimate the sizes of past earthquakes over the past several hundred years, and develop rough projections of future fault activity. Many ore deposits lie on or are associated with faults. This is because the fractured rock associated with fault zones allow for magma ascent or the circulation of mineral-bearing fluids. Intersections of near-vertical faults are often locations of significant ore deposits. An example of

988-474: Is one occurrence of a particular ore type. Most ore deposits are named according to their location, or after a discoverer (e.g. the Kambalda nickel shoots are named after drillers), or after some whimsy, a historical figure, a prominent person, a city or town from which the owner came, something from mythology (such as the name of a god or goddess) or the code name of the resource company which found it (e.g. MKD-5

1040-444: Is the plane that represents the fracture surface of a fault. A fault trace or fault line is a place where the fault can be seen or mapped on the surface. A fault trace is also the line commonly plotted on geologic maps to represent a fault. A fault zone is a cluster of parallel faults. However, the term is also used for the zone of crushed rock along a single fault. Prolonged motion along closely spaced faults can blur

1092-456: The Chesapeake Bay impact crater . Ring faults are the result of a series of overlapping normal faults, forming a circular outline. Fractures created by ring faults may be filled by ring dikes . Synthetic and antithetic are terms used to describe minor faults associated with a major fault. Synthetic faults dip in the same direction as the major fault while the antithetic faults dip in

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1144-730: The United States and the Shanghai Futures Exchange in China. The global Chromium market is currently dominated by the United States and China. Iron ore is traded between customer and producer, though various benchmark prices are set quarterly between the major mining conglomerates and the major consumers, and this sets the stage for smaller participants. Other, lesser, commodities do not have international clearing houses and benchmark prices, with most prices negotiated between suppliers and customers one-on-one. This generally makes determining

1196-553: The acidity of their immediate surroundings and of water, with numerous, long lasting impacts on ecosystems. When water becomes contaminated it may transport these compounds far from the tailings site, greatly increasing the affected range. Uranium ores and those containing other radioactive elements may pose a significant threat if leaving occurs and isotope concentration increases above background levels. Radiation can have severe, long lasting environmental impacts and cause irreversible damage to living organisms. Metallurgy began with

1248-414: The crust. A thrust fault has the same sense of motion as a reverse fault, but with the dip of the fault plane at less than 45°. Thrust faults typically form ramps, flats and fault-bend (hanging wall and footwall) folds. A section of a hanging wall or foot wall where a thrust fault formed along a relatively weak bedding plane is known as a flat and a section where the thrust fault cut upward through

1300-451: The desired mineral(s) from it. Once processed, the gangue is known as tailings , which are useless but potentially harmful materials produced in great quantity, especially from lower grade deposits. An ore deposit is an economically significant accumulation of minerals within a host rock. This is distinct from a mineral resource in that it is a mineral deposit occurring in high enough concentration to be economically viable. An ore deposit

1352-417: The direct working of native metals such as gold, lead and copper. Placer deposits, for example, would have been the first source of native gold. The first exploited ores were copper oxides such as malachite and azurite, over 7000 years ago at Çatalhöyük . These were the easiest to work, with relatively limited mining and basic requirements for smelting. It is believed they were once much more abundant on

1404-433: The direction of extension or shortening changes during the deformation but the earlier formed faults remain active. The hade angle is defined as the complement of the dip angle; it is the angle between the fault plane and a vertical plane that strikes parallel to the fault. Ring faults , also known as caldera faults , are faults that occur within collapsed volcanic calderas and the sites of bolide strikes, such as

1456-431: The distinction, as the rock between the faults is converted to fault-bound lenses of rock and then progressively crushed. Due to friction and the rigidity of the constituent rocks, the two sides of a fault cannot always glide or flow past each other easily, and so occasionally all movement stops. The regions of higher friction along a fault plane, where it becomes locked, are called asperities . Stress builds up when

1508-409: The fault (called a piercing point ). In practice, it is usually only possible to find the slip direction of faults, and an approximation of the heave and throw vector. The two sides of a non-vertical fault are known as the hanging wall and footwall . The hanging wall occurs above the fault plane and the footwall occurs below it. This terminology comes from mining: when working a tabular ore body,

1560-532: The fault is the vertical component of the separation and the heave of the fault is the horizontal component, as in "Throw up and heave out". The vector of slip can be qualitatively assessed by studying any drag folding of strata, which may be visible on either side of the fault. Drag folding is a zone of folding close to a fault that likely arises from frictional resistance to movement on the fault. The direction and magnitude of heave and throw can be measured only by finding common intersection points on either side of

1612-413: The fault movement. Faults are mainly classified in terms of the angle that the fault plane makes with the Earth's surface, known as the dip , and the direction of slip along the fault plane. Based on the direction of slip, faults can be categorized as: In a strike-slip fault (also known as a wrench fault , tear fault or transcurrent fault ), the fault surface (plane) is usually near vertical, and

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1664-406: The fault. A fault in ductile rocks can also release instantaneously when the strain rate is too great. Slip is defined as the relative movement of geological features present on either side of a fault plane. A fault's sense of slip is defined as the relative motion of the rock on each side of the fault concerning the other side. In measuring the horizontal or vertical separation, the throw of

1716-428: The footwall moves laterally either left or right with very little vertical motion. Strike-slip faults with left-lateral motion are also known as sinistral faults and those with right-lateral motion as dextral faults. Each is defined by the direction of movement of the ground as would be seen by an observer on the opposite side of the fault. A special class of strike-slip fault is the transform fault when it forms

1768-531: The footwall. The dip of most normal faults is at least 60 degrees but some normal faults dip at less than 45 degrees. A downthrown block between two normal faults dipping towards each other is a graben . A block stranded between two grabens, and therefore two normal faults dipping away from each other, is a horst . A sequence of grabens and horsts on the surface of the Earth produces a characteristic basin and range topography . Normal faults can evolve into listric faults, with their plane dip being steeper near

1820-429: The geometric gap, and depending on its rheology , the hanging wall might fold and slide downwards into the gap and produce rollover folding , or break into further faults and blocks which fil in the gap. If faults form, imbrication fans or domino faulting may form. A reverse fault is the opposite of a normal fault—the hanging wall moves up relative to the footwall. Reverse faults indicate compressive shortening of

1872-458: The highest concentration of any single metal available. They are composed of chert beds alternating between high and low iron concentrations. Their deposition occurred early in Earth's history when the atmospheric composition was significantly different from today. Iron rich water is thought to have upwelled where it oxidized to Fe (III) in the presence of early photosynthetic plankton producing oxygen. This iron then precipitated out and deposited on

1924-491: The implied mechanism of deformation. A fault that passes through different levels of the lithosphere will have many different types of fault rock developed along its surface. Continued dip-slip displacement tends to juxtapose fault rocks characteristic of different crustal levels, with varying degrees of overprinting. This effect is particularly clear in the case of detachment faults and major thrust faults . The main types of fault rock include: In geotechnical engineering ,

1976-464: The largest faults on Earth and give rise to the largest earthquakes. A fault which has a component of dip-slip and a component of strike-slip is termed an oblique-slip fault . Nearly all faults have some component of both dip-slip and strike-slip; hence, defining a fault as oblique requires both dip and strike components to be measurable and significant. Some oblique faults occur within transtensional and transpressional regimes, and others occur where

2028-412: The leading source of copper ore. Porphyry copper deposits form along convergent boundaries and are thought to originate from the partial melting of subducted oceanic plates and subsequent concentration of Cu, driven by oxidation. These are large, round, disseminated deposits containing on average 0.8% copper by weight. Hydrothermal Hydrothermal deposits are a large source of ore. They form as

2080-620: The main tin source, began. Some 3000 years ago, the smelting of iron ores began in Mesopotamia . Iron oxide is quite abundant on the surface and forms from a variety of processes. Until the 18th century gold, copper, lead, iron, silver, tin, arsenic and mercury were the only metals mined and used. In recent decades, Rare Earth Elements have been increasingly exploited for various high-tech applications. This has led to an ever-growing search for REE ore and novel ways of extracting said elements. Ores (metals) are traded internationally and comprise

2132-408: The miner stood with the footwall under his feet and with the hanging wall above him. These terms are important for distinguishing different dip-slip fault types: reverse faults and normal faults. In a reverse fault, the hanging wall displaces upward, while in a normal fault the hanging wall displaces downward. Distinguishing between these two fault types is important for determining the stress regime of

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2184-435: The most common. With the passage of time, a regional reversal between tensional and compressional stresses (or vice-versa) might occur, and faults may be reactivated with their relative block movement inverted in opposite directions to the original movement (fault inversion). In such a way, a normal fault may therefore become a reverse fault and vice versa. In a normal fault, the hanging wall moves downward, relative to

2236-582: The ocean floor. The banding is thought to be a result of changing plankton population. Sediment Hosted Copper forms from the precipitation of a copper rich oxidized brine into sedimentary rocks. These are a source of copper primarily in the form of copper-sulfide minerals. Placer deposits are the result of weathering, transport, and subsequent concentration of a valuable mineral via water or wind. They are typically sources of gold (Au), platinum group elements (PGE), sulfide minerals , tin (Sn), tungsten (W), and rare-earth elements (REEs). A placer deposit

2288-482: The opposite direction. These faults may be accompanied by rollover anticlines (e.g. the Niger Delta Structural Style). All faults have a measurable thickness, made up of deformed rock characteristic of the level in the crust where the faulting happened, of the rock types affected by the fault and of the presence and nature of any mineralising fluids . Fault rocks are classified by their textures and

2340-431: The price of ores of this nature opaque and difficult. Such metals include lithium , niobium - tantalum , bismuth , antimony and rare earths . Most of these commodities are also dominated by one or two major suppliers with >60% of the world's reserves. China is currently leading in world production of Rare Earth Elements. The World Bank reports that China was the top importer of ores and metals in 2005 followed by

2392-412: The right time for—and type of— igneous differentiation . At a given time differentiated magmas would burst violently out of the fault-traps and head to shallower places in the crust where porphyry copper deposits would be formed. As faults are zones of weakness, they facilitate the interaction of water with the surrounding rock and enhance chemical weathering . The enhanced chemical weathering increases

2444-436: The size of the weathered zone and hence creates more space for groundwater . Fault zones act as aquifers and also assist groundwater transport. Ore Minerals of interest are generally oxides , sulfides , silicates , or native metals such as copper or gold . Ore bodies are formed by a variety of geological processes generally referred to as ore genesis and can be classified based on their deposit type. Ore

2496-416: The stratigraphic sequence is known as a ramp . Typically, thrust faults move within formations by forming flats and climbing up sections with ramps. This results in the hanging wall flat (or a portion thereof) lying atop the foot wall ramp as shown in the fault-bend fold diagram. Thrust faults form nappes and klippen in the large thrust belts. Subduction zones are a special class of thrusts that form

2548-465: The surface than today. After this, copper sulphides would have been turned to as oxide resources depleted and the Bronze Age progressed. Lead production from galena smelting may have been occurring at this time as well. The smelting of arsenic-copper sulphides would have produced the first bronze alloys. The majority of bronze creation however required tin, and thus the exploitation of cassiterite,

2600-400: The surface, then shallower with increased depth, with the fault plane curving into the Earth. They can also form where the hanging wall is absent (such as on a cliff), where the footwall may slump in a manner that creates multiple listric faults. The fault panes of listric faults can further flatten and evolve into a horizontal or near-horizontal plane, where slip progresses horizontally along

2652-570: The vicinity. In California, for example, new building construction has been prohibited directly on or near faults that have moved within the Holocene Epoch (the last 11,700 years) of the Earth's geological history. Also, faults that have shown movement during the Holocene plus Pleistocene Epochs (the last 2.6 million years) may receive consideration, especially for critical structures such as power plants, dams, hospitals, and schools. Geologists assess

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2704-466: Was the in-house name for the Mount Keith nickel sulphide deposit ). Ore deposits are classified according to various criteria developed via the study of economic geology, or ore genesis . The following is a general categorization of the main ore deposit types: Magmatic deposits are ones who originate directly from magma These are ore deposits which form as a direct result of metamorphism. These are

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