New Developments in the Geology and Exploration of Mineral Deposits 2026

Note: We have several different categories of tickets for both the whole event and individual days depending on whether you are a Company Professional (CP); USGS Employee or DREGS Member; or Student. There are also in-person and online tickets. Please choose your ticket(s) appropriately.

Tuesday, January 6 (Day 1)

Orogenic Gold: Geology, Geochemistry, Genesis, and Exploration Criteria with Dr. Richard J. Goldfarb

This course will provide a comprehensive overview on the geology of and exploration for orogenic gold deposits, the most widespread type of gold deposit globally and an important gold target type in Colombia. It will provide descriptions of the most important Precambrian and Phanerozoic examples of orogenic gold ores formed in the world’s young accretionary orogens and old cratonic greenstone belts. Topics to be covered include tectonic and structural controls, geological characteristics, geochemical and geophysical signatures, geochronological relationships, and exploration strategies. Other gold deposit types with some overlapping features, particularly intrusion-related and Carlin-type gold deposits, will be compared and contrasted to indicate what type of ore systems are the most favorable targets for the explorationist in various provinces.

Course Outline:

• 1) Introduction to the Geology of Gold Deposits
• 2) Geological Characteristics of Orogenic Gold (Gold in Metamorphic Rocks)
• 3) Mineralogy, Alteration, and Geochemistry of Orogenic Gold and Implications
• 4) Genetic Models for Orogenic Gold
• 5) Cenozoic-Mesozoic Orogenic Gold (and what about Colombia!)
• 6) Paleozoic-Neoproterozoic Orogenic Gold
• 7) Precambrian Orogenic Gold
• 8) Comparisons and Contrasts with Carlin-type Gold Deposits and Intrusion-Related Gold Deposits: Why the Confusion?

Wednesday, January 7 (Day 2)

Porphyry Deposits - David Cooke

Thursday, January 8 (Day 3)

Part 1: Sn-W-Li with Dr. Mathias Burisch-Hassel

Part 2: Skarn Deposits with Dr. Zhaoshan Chang

Skarns are one of the most common deposit types with significant economic values, and they are typically part of a larger magmatic hydrothermal system. Skarns may extend towards the causative intrusions to porphyry or greisen deposits depending on the redox state, and towards distal locations to carbonate replacement deposits, and farther away to Carlin-, Carlin-like, or epithermal deposits. For the exploration of skarn and related deposits, zoning is an effective tool. In addition, in skarn-porphyry districts there are typically many intrusions. To identify the causative intrusion, zoning is an important, sometimes the only tool. In this module, recent discoveries in zoning patterns in both alteration and mineralization will be summarized and explained, after introducing the typical skarn paragenesis. This course will also cover the geometry of skarns and its controlling factors, metal endowment/fertility of skarns, and the transition between skarn and porphyry deposits.

Friday, January 9 (Day 4)

Epithermal Deposits with Dr. Jeffrey Hedenquist

This course will review the economic importance of epithermal deposits, their location and distribution, and their genetic relations, but most emphasis will be on what geologists can see in the field, and what it tells us about what kind of system is involved, where we are in the system, and how it can help us locate ore. The term epithermal encompasses a very diverse suite of ore deposits that formed under a limited range of pressure and temperature conditions, but that vary widely in most other characteristics. Their ore and gangue mineralogy, hydrothermal alteration mineralogy and zoning, and especially their distinctive textures are recognizable from mostly simple field observations, and understanding of the processes that produced them help guide exploration.

Saturday, January 10 (Day 5)

Part 1:Volcanic-Hosted Massive Sulfide Deposits with Dr. Thomas Monecke

Submarine hydrothermal systems represent one of the oldest and most important ore-forming processes in the geologic record. This course will examine the diversity of hydrothermal systems and the nature of fluid flow in submarine volcanic environments, with an emphasis on the formation of volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits. The geological characteristics of these base and precious metal deposits and the hydrothermal processes that produce them will be discussed. Special emphasis will be placed on the interpretation of geological settings, controls on mineralization, ore mineralogy and geochemistry, hydrothermal alteration, and enrichment of precious metals. Strategies for exploration in ancient volcanic terrains will be derived.

Part 2: Cu-Ni-PGE Sulphide Deposits with Mike Lesher

This part of the course will begin with an overview of the temporal, petrotectonic, volcanic/intrusive settings, and compositions/mineralogy/textures of magmatic Ni-Cu-Co-PGE deposits. It will examine each step in deposit formation, including partial melting of the mantle, transport through the continental crust, emplacement into or eruption onto the crust, thermomechanical erosion with crustal S sources, assimilation of silicate components and dynamic upgrading of sulfide xenomelts, sulfide melt deposition and crystallization, and the effects of deformation of metamorphism. This will be followed by the development of a scaled exploration model, highlighting which factors are more important and which are less important. It will conclude with a summary of current research in ore genesis and exploration.

Richard J. Goldfarb received his BS in geology from Bucknell U., MSc in hydrogeology at University of Nevada-MacKay School of Mines, and his PhD in geology at the University of Colorado. He was a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey for 36 years. His studies have focused on global metallogeny, geology of ore deposits in the North American Cordillera with emphasis on orogenic gold, lode gold deposits in China, and geochemical applications to the understanding of ore genesis. Rich has authored more than 250 papers on mineral resources, which have received more than 15,000 citations, with many recognized as the authoritative research work on gold in metamorphic terranes and on aspects of regional metallogeny. He is a past-president of the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG) and past chief editor of Mineralium Deposita. He was awarded the Silver Medal by the Society of Economic Geologists in 2011 and the Gold Medal by the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits (SGA) in 2021 for his contributions to economic geology. Presently, Rich is a volunteer research professor at Colorado School of Mines and an overseas professor for China University of Geosciences Beijing, serves on the Board of C2C Gold Corp, and is an independent consultant to the exploration and mining industry.

David Cooke is the Director of CODES, University of Tasmania, and the Editor of Economic Geology. David and his students have been researching porphyry, epithermal, skarn and carbonate-replacement deposits globally for the past four decades, working closely with industry to develop new tools and workflows to aid discovery, ore deposit characterization, resolve processes of ore formation and refine genetic and exploration models for magmatic-hydrothermal mineral systems.

Mathias Burisch-Hassel is a Professor and the Chair of Resource Mineralogy at Montanuniversität Leoben. Prior to his current position he was a faculty member at Colorado School of Mines and a researcher at TU Bergakademie Freiberg. In addition to his academic roles, he provides consulting services to the mineral exploration industry. Burisch’s group combines basic and use-inspired research aiming to better understand the sum of geological processes that result in the formation, transformation, and preservation of ore deposits.

Zhaoshan Chang is the Charles Fogarty Endowed Chair and Professor in Economic Geology at Colorado School of Mines (CSM), Golden, Colorado. Zhaoshan has studied several types of deposits, including skarn, porphyry, epithermal, IOCG, W-Sn, and sediment-hosted gold deposits, in 19 countries. He works closely with the industry on exploration-oriented research projects, looking for far-field signals, discriminators, and zoning patterns in mineralogy, textures, SWIR spectral features, whole-rock and mineral geochemistry, and isotopic compositions that can be directly used in exploration. He also works on ore-forming processes, magma fertility, regional metallogenesis, and SWIR spectral and LA-ICP-MS/MS techniques (mineral trace element analysis and mapping; dating – zircon, garnet, cassiterite, micas). Zhaoshan has worked in five universities in three countries: Peking University, China (1997-2000), Washington State University, USA (2004), University of Tasmania (2004-2011) and James Cook University (2011-2018; EGRU Director), Australia, and Colorado School of Mines, USA (2018 - ).

Jeffrey Hedenquist is an independent advisor to the mineral industry on exploration for and assessment of hydrothermal ore deposits, with work in 45 countries for over 145 companies and agencies on over 440 assignments, including training. From 1979 to 1998 he spent 10 years each with government institutes of New Zealand and Japan, studying active geothermal and magmatic hydrothermal systems, as well as the formation of epithermal gold and porphyry copper deposits.

Thomas Monecke is an economic geologist who specializes in the formation of base and precious metal deposits in modern and ancient volcanic arcs. He has more than 25 years of experience in geological research and mineral exploration and has authored or co-authored approximately 120 journal papers, book chapters, government publications, and field guides during that period. Thomas graduated from the University of Freiberg, Germany, with a M.Sc. in 1996. He obtained his Ph.D. from the same university with his doctoral thesis focusing on the anatomy of a volcanic-hosted massive sulfide deposit in northern Australia. Between 2002 and 2008, Thomas conducted post-doctoral research at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, the University of Ottawa, and the Geological Survey of Canada on modern and ancient gold-rich volcanic-hydrothermal systems. In 2006, Thomas received the Waldemar Lindgren Award of the Society of Economic Geologists. He joined the Colorado School of Mines in 2008 where he teaches economic geology. Thomas runs a large research group and supervises graduate student working on a diverse range of hydrothermal ore deposits around the world. He currently serves as director of the Center to Advance the Science of Exploration to Reclamation in Mining, which is the largest mining research center in the U.S.

Michael Lesher is an American geologist. He is an authority on the geology and origin of nickel-copper-platinum group element deposits, especially those associated with komatiites, their physical volcanology and localization, the geochemistry and petrology of associated rocks, and controls on their composition. He holds BSc and MA degrees in geology from Indiana University Bloomington, and a PhD degree in geology from the University of Western Australia. Between 1975 and 1979, he worked as an Exploration Geologist and Mineralogist for the Iron Ore Company of Canada; between 1982 and 1984, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the J. Tuzo Wilson Research Laboratories of the University of Toronto; and between 1984 and 1997, he was Professor of Economic Geology at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In 1997, he was appointed Professor of Economic Geology, NSERC Senior Industrial Research Chair in Mineral Exploration, and Founding Director of the Mineral Exploration Research Centre at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. In 2010-2011 he served as Director of Mining Initiatives, designing and founding the School of Mines (now Goodman School of Mines). He has been a Visiting Fellow in the Abteilung Geochemie at the Max Planck Institute für Chemie (1989 and 1991) and the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University (1990), an Honorary Professor at the Chengdu University of Technology (2000), and a visiting professor at Indiana University (2002-2003), and has given plenary, keynote, and invited lectures all over the world. In 2021 he was appointed Professor Emeritus at Laurentian University.

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