PRELIMINARY RESULTS ON CRITICAL MINERAL CONCENTRATION IN THE UPPER DEVONIAN STRATA AT SELECTED LOCALITIES IN WESTERN NEW YORK

Critical minerals are chemical elements that are essential for economic development and national security. Determining chemistry of geologically interesting areas with fundamental understanding of the mechanisms is thus of broad interest. The discovery of critical elements with economic concentration relies on the various parameters, ore-forming environments, and host lithologies.

In this preliminary study, we conducted initial test analyses of Upper Devonian bedrock strata in western New York using geochemical analyses. Both major and minor elements of selected sedimentary sequence in the Upper Devonian strata were analyzed. Pellets of studied samples were analyzed using Shimadzu ED-XRF 7200 facility with standardized analyses. Comparing with the upper continental crust (Rudnick & Gao., 2014), the analyzed rocks in the Upper Devonian strata show elevated concentration of vanadium, copper, zinc, lanthanum, cerium, lead and sulfur. The enrichment of sulfur is consistent with petrographic documentation of the existence of sulfide minerals in the specimens. The chemical analyses also reveal varying results across difference sections of the same outcrops, pointing out local control in elemental accumulation. Our chemical analyses indicate that the Upper Devonian in NYS is not barren and could be considered for selecting critical minerals. These results suggest that enrichment factors may include the ion adsorption by various clay minerals in the samples, impacts of sedimentary provenance, etc. Future work using powder XRD or a more compressive strata results would help determine the fundamental mechanism that led to the increase of these elements.

Rudnick, R. L., and Gao, S., 2014, Composition of the Continental Crust. Treatise on Geochemistry (Second Edition).