• journal_title：Economic Geology
• Contributor：E. S. T. O'Driscoll
• Publisher：Society of Economic Geologists
• Date：1981-
• Format：text/html
• Language：en
• Identifier：10.2113/gsecongeo.76.6.1364
• journal_abbrev：Economic Geology
• issn：0361-0128
• volume：76
• issue：6
• firstpage：1364
• section：Articles

During the past ten years, Western Mining Corporation has carried out specific tectonic studies of ore occurrences in the Western Australian nickel belt, at various scales ranging from those appropriate to an individual ore shoot, to broader scales relating to regional and continental tectonic patterns. These studies indicate that nickel mineralization, on a regional scale, is repeatedly localized at a particular structural conjunction where the host rock is transected discordantly by a relatively narrow belt or corridor of disturbance, rendered visible by processing patterns of geologic and geophysical data. For reasons of exploratory advantage, many of the results of the studies have remained confidential for various periods of time. Western Mining Corporation has recently authorized the release of data which show that the same structural signature, at a regional scale, is repeated in the four principal Ni sulfide deposits of the Western Australian nickel belt, namely, Kambalda, Perseverance, Mt. Keith, and Mt. Windarra. In each of these instances, the associated linear structural corridor is parallel to the giant Kalgoorlie-Shark Bay magnetic lineament, a major double-edged belt of crustal disturbance which cuts west-northwesterly for 800 km through the nickel belt. The regional lineament through the Kambalda deposits is contained within the Kalgoorlie-Shark Bay magnetic lineament zone, while the Perseverance, Mt. Windarra, and Mt. Keith deposits lie, respectively, on separate parallel west-northwest corridors several hundred kilometers to the north. The regional west-northwesterly structural discontinuities related to individual nickel deposits are typically upward of 80 km in length and variably from one to several kilometers in width.