Kurt Friehauf - ResearchKurt Friehauf - ResearchWe are all partners in a quest.
The essential
questions have no answers.
Questions unite
people.
Answers divide them.
Elie Wiesel - 1986 Nobel Peace Prize
My research integrates extensive field
mapping data and petrographic work with thermodynamic modeling to
evaluate metasomatic chemical reaction paths. My current research
projects focus on:
One
Kutztown undergraduate student accompanied me to the southern Namibian desert
to study a 1.8 billion year old copper deposit. This
deposit is extraordinary in that the deposit is unusually old
and beautifully preserved! We spent three weeks at the
field site, plus several days in Windhoek where I gave a
presentation to the University of Namibia geology program. The Teck
geologists on the project were very smart and energized
people.
Petrographic and geochemical work on this project is ongoing in the Kutztown University economic geology / petrology lab.
On the Alaska project, three KU
undergraduate students worked with me in the Yukon-Tanana uplands in the Alaskan
interior doing geologic mapping with
follow-up microscope work on an ancient volcanic/geothermal site
that, sadly, failed to deposit much gold. The site is
therefore an opportunity to see why some gold-forming
systems fail to form orebodies. The project is a
collaboration with a private company called Full Metal Minerals, Inc.
We also developed a quantitative method for analyzing drill core to determine if the “well” was drilled in a direction such that it approached zinc mineralization. Microscopic study of samples taken is ongoing in the Kutztown University economic geology / petrology lab.
We will try to present the results of this project at the Mineral Exploration “Roundup” meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada) in January 2012.
In the Qinling
Mountains of Henan province, we are studying the origins
of a belt of magmatic-hydrothermal molybdenum deposits.
This work is in collaboration with the China University of
Geosciences in Beijing. I brought two Kutztown University
undergraduate students to Henan
province
in China with me in the summer of 2008 to aid in this
work. The trip was a cornucopia of fascinating
lessons in Chinese culture and frustrating lessons in...
well... other aspects
of Chinese culture! 
At Bayan Obo, we are looking
at chemical variations in the limestone rocks that host the
orebodies to see if there is evidence for influence by carbonatite
magmas (either as orthomagmatic lava flows and
intrusions, or due to hydrothermal activity related to carbonatite
intrusions at depth). This work is in collaboration with the
China University of Geosciences in Beijing. I brought three
Kutztown University undergraduate students to Inner
Mongolia,
China with me in the summer of 2004 to aid in this work.
At Ertsberg
in West
Papua, Indonesia, my field mapping (1999-2002) revealed the
system to be hosted by several igneous phases that alternate in
time with multiple structural and hydrothermal events. I am
currently refining that work through petrographic studies aimed at
constraining the fluid chemistry, temperature, and pressure.
In collaboration with Dr.
Spencer Titley and Stacie Gibbins (University of Arizona), I
am also studying the origins of the giant Grasberg porphyry copper
deposit in the same district. Although the Grasberg and Ertsberg
porphyry deposits occur within 2 km of one another and apparently
formed within 100,000 years of one another in relation to similar
igneous rocks, metasomatism around the Grasberg center is much
more intense and widespread. The ultimate goal of this
project is to draw a comparison of physiochemical conditions
between these two contrasting systems to identify some of the
factors that affect how porphyry hydrothermal systems evolve.
I am also investigating, in collaboration
with the Berks Products Corporation and Dr. Sarah Tindall
along with a crew of Kutztown University undergraduate student
researchers, the geological controls on groundwater
flow and cave formation in
eastern
Pennsylvania. We are comparing hydrologic data such as
changes in groundwater table and groundwater chemistry
(temperature, pH, etc.) in a field of monitoring wells with rock
types and fracture patterns mapped in the adjacent quarry.
Our goal is to determine the relative importance of different
types of fractures, the abundance of fractures, and the chemistry
of the limestone rocks in affecting cave formation and groundwater
flow in the area.
The focus of the magnetite
(iron) deposits of the eastern U.S. research is to
determine if the Proterozoic
magnetite
deposits scattered throughout eastern Pennsylvania, northern
New Jersey, and southern New York are related to one another and,
if they are, learn what causes the subtle variations in their
geology. These old magnetite deposits may be similar
in origin to the much younger iron deposits that occur in contact
aureoles of plutons intruding the Triassic/Jurassic rift basins
nearby, which Rose et al. (1985) proposed to be the result
of hydrothermal activity related to regional fluid flow of
non-magmatic (basinal? evaporative?) brines. The widespread
scale of the many small magnetite Proterozoic deposits, their
relationship to hydrothermally altered wall rocks, and the
spatially systematic variation in this alteration and the host
rock types suggests the Proterozoic deposits are related to the
same general geologic event and that different deposits formed at
different depths. This work is in collaboration with Dr.
Robert C. Smith II (Pennsylvania Geological Survey) and Richard
Volkert (New Jersey Geological Survey).
My Ph.D. research combined field mapping with
detailed petrographic studies, investigations of the carbon-oxygen
isotope systematics in carbonate rocks, and irreversible
thermodynamic reaction path modeling to document metasomatic
reactions in carbonate rocks by fluids given off during the late
stages of the crystallization of felsic magmas (i.e. porphyry
copper deposits). These aqueous solutions are analogous to those
recorded in active geothermal systems in volcanic arcs of the
circumpacific (e.g. Pinatubo Philippines and White Island New
Zealand). The exposures in the mine at Superior Arizona
provided remarkable access to the hydrothermal system there,
allowing detailed study of 1) the geology of carbonate-hosted
massive sulfide replacement ores, 2) factors affecting the
relative sulfur, metal, and chlorine budgets metaliferous
solutions upon reaction with wall rocks, and 3) the evaluation of
stable isotopic tracers in determining fluid flow paths in
carbonate rocks.
