Recent advances in structural geology, lithogeochemistry and exploration for VHMS deposits, Kristineberg area, Skellefte District, Sweden

Kristineberg is the largest mine and VHMS deposit in the Palaeoproterozoic Skellefte District, Sweden. The deposit was discovered in 1918, and it has been mined since 1941. Besides the Kristineberg deposit, several other VHMS deposits have been mined in the Kristineberg area. Despite the long history of mining, significant advances are still being made in terms of exploration and understanding the geological framework of the ore bodies. A key to this success has been persistence in exploration and a combination of local and regional scale geological, geophysical and geochemical surveys. Holistic industry-university collaborative research projects have furthermore played an important role in bringing together geologists and geophysicists from different disciplines to tackle the large-scale geological framework. Among other things, these projects have resulted in the first structural geological 3D model of the Kristineberg area, better age constraints on the formation of the deposits, a regional alteration map as well as ongoing work to model alteration in 3D. This contribution summarizes the results of these investigations and recent exploration.