Abstract
MDSG ABSTRACTS 2013
This issue continues our practice of publishing the abstracts from the Mineral Deposit Study Group meeting that is held each January in the UK. The 2013 meeting took place at the University of Leicester and we especially thank Dave Holwell and all the reviewers for preparing the abstract volume. Appropriately, there is a significant contribution from staff and postgraduates at Leicester and hopefully several of these studies will become full papers in the near future.
For a southern hemisphere reader who cannot attend every MDSG meeting, the abstracts provide a wonderful overview of what researchers are focussing on in Europe and northern Asia. For European and Asian readers, the abstracts provide a wide-ranging overview of current work by many research groups in the field of applied geology. Without compromising science in any way, these abstracts show how mineralogy and geochemistry, in particular, can have a commercial and practical focus.
Rare earth elements feature in many abstracts and this is appropriate given their increased prominence in recent years. In the true sense, these authors have been responsive to the community concern and interest regarding REEs; and research programs have been redirected to understand REEs better and to devise innovative ways to explore for and process then. Platinum group elements also feature in the abstracts with both the conventional examples like the Bushveld and many less-conventional occurrences where lateral thought might turn some into tomorrow's mines.
The return in some studies to classic geological areas such as Cornwall, Dartmoor and the magmatic ore deposits is useful; the descriptions help to remind us what magmatic mineralisation might look like. This calibration can be useful for a term like magmatic ore deposits that is used and understood in many different ways globally.