Fluid dynamics and fluid-structural relationships in the Red Lake mine trend, Red Lake greenstone belt, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

The Red Lake mine trend, a deformation zone in the Archean Red Lake greenstone belt that hosts the world-class Campbell-Red Lake gold deposit, is characterized by abundant foliation-parallel iron-carbonate ± quartz veins with banded colloform-crustiform structures and cockade breccias overprinted by silicification and gold mineralization. There is an apparent incompatibility between the cavity-fill structures of the veins and breccias (typically developed at shallow crustal depths) and the upper greenschist to lower amphibole facies metamorphic conditions recorded in the host rocks (indicating relatively deep environments). This, together with the development of veins along the foliation plane, represents an enigmatic problem that may be related to the interplay between fluid dynamics and stress field. We approach this problem through systematic study of fluid inclusion planes (FIPs) in the vein minerals, including the orientations of the FIPs and the pressure–temperature conditions inferred from fluid inclusion microthermometry. We find that fluid inclusions in the main stage vein minerals (pregold mineralization ankerite and quartz and syn-ore quartz) are predominantly carbonic without a visible aqueous phase, whereas many inclusions in the postore stage contain an aqueous phase. Most FIPs are subvertical, and many are subparallel to the foliation. High fluid pressure coupled with the high wetting angles of the water-poor, carbonic fluids may have been responsible for the abundance of brittle deformation features. The development of subvertical FIPs is interpreted to indicate episodic switching of the maximum principal compressive stress (σ1) from subhorizontal (perpendicular to the foliation) to subvertical (parallel to the foliation) orientation. The subvertical σ1 is favorable for the formation of foliation-parallel veins, as fractures are preferentially opened along the foliation in such a stress regime, the origin of which may be linked to the fluid source.