WU Shu-zhuang1,2, WANG Shu-hong1,3, CHEN Han4, ZHENG Xu-feng1, LI Gang1, HUANG Wei-xia1, XIE An-yuan1,2, YAN Wen1
(1. Key Laboratory of Marginal Sea Geology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510301, China;
2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China;
3. Key Laboratory of Marine Mineral Resources,Ministry of Land and Resources, Guangzhou 510075, China;
4. Island Research Center, SOA, Pingtan 350400, China)
Abstract: The rare metal minerals as well as grain size and sediment types, and rare metal elements were analyzed for 273 surface sediment samples collected from the continental shelf of the northwestern South China Sea to discuss the distribution characteristics and mainly influencing factors of rare metal minerals. Results reveal that the distribution of heavy minerals in research area is mainly determined by provenance, sediment types and hydrodynamic conditions. It is unreasonable to evaluate the distribution of rare metal minerals in dependence on the rare mental elements in sediments due to the notable difference between their distributions. We could roughly divided the rare mental mineral into five regions, i.e. Shuidong bay, the southern part of Pearl River estuary, between Shang/Xiachuang island and Hailing island, Zhangjiang bay and coastal southeast of Hainan island, on the base of the distribution characteristics of heavy minerals and sedimentary environment analysis. These five metal mineral-rich regions tend to enrich corresponding rare metal minerals that are expected to be potential reservoir, especially the most prosperous rare metal minerals, i.e. ilmenite, leucoxene and zircon.
Keywords: rare metal mineral; rare metal element; distribution characteristics; influencing factor; continental shelf; northwestern South China Sea
ACTA MINERALOGICA SINICA Vol. 36, No. 3, 2016, Page 429
