Geochemical peculiarities of the Petropavlovsk gold deposit, Polar Ural [ГЕОХИМИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ПЕТРОПАВЛОВСКОГО ЗОЛОТОРУДНОГО МЕСТОРОЖДЕНИЯ (ПОЛЯРНЫЙ УРАЛ)]

The Petropavlovsk gold deposit belongs to the hydrothermal gold–quartz–sulfide formations. The principal metallic minerals are gold and pyrite; the latter is localized in the hydrothermally altered rocks (quartz–calcite–sericitic metasomatic ore). Chalcopyrite, sphalerite, magnetite, fahlore, etc. are encountered less often. This research aims to reveal geochemical peculiarities of the Petropavlovsk deposit, to analyze geochemical specialization and the behavior of rocks and elements with increasing depth, and to correlate Au with other elements and with pyritization intensity. The analysis data were processed in Statistica 6 and Excel, grouped and subjected to variance analysis. The research findings based on almost 1500 observations show that the contents of gold and silver are the highest in beresite, metasomatic ore and tuffs. The gold and silver contents of quartz lodes are lower. The connection is revealed between the elements in different composition and genesis rocks, lodes and skarns. The implemented interpretation allowed distinguishing a number of groups of elements with similar behavior, and some important inferences for understanding geochemistry of the Petropavlovsk deposit were made. When analyzing the resultant graphs, the authors arrived to the conclusion on the evident connection between the gold content and pyritization intensity as the highest contents of gold were observed in rock containing more than 40 % of sulfides in their composition. In order to analyze the vertical zonality of gold and other elements, the graphs of their behavior with depth were plotted. The gold content is unvaried with depth, which is important for the prediction of gold mineralization. © 2020 Publishing house Mining book. All rights reserved.