HiTech AlkCarb - New geomodels to explore deeper for High-Technology critical raw materials in Alkaline rocks and Carbonatites

01/02/2016 to 31/07/2018

The HiTech AlkCarb project brings together 12 teams to make a step-change in exploration models for alkaline and carbonatite provinces. The project will tackle a series of geological science questions that have the potential to revolutionise exploration in alkaline-carbonatite complexes.
One of these questions is if and how we can we predict what intrusive rocks are present at depth using volcanic carbonatites and alkaline rocks exposed at the surface.
This is fundamental to being able to explore at depth, especially in central and southern Europe. The question will be tackled first by gathering new petrological and geochemical data from drill core produced from the test drilling site at the Kaiserstuhl carbonatite, which is Europe’s best example of a carbonatite-alkaline complex containing extrusive and intrusive alkaline rocks and carbonatites.
These data will be compared to the known surface outcrops to find out more about the genetic relations between intrusive and extrusive carbonatitic and alkaline silicate rocks and how they change with depth in the intrusion. The Tübingen petrology group will lead this task.