Geochem Distbn

GEOCHEMICAL ANOMALY
It is defined as the above-average concentration of a chemical element in a sample of

rock, soil, vegetation, stream, or sediment; it is generally indicative of a nearby mineral deposit.
GEOCHEMICAL TRACERS
Tracers are useful in hydrology and geochemistry in that they can be used to identify
source, origin and residence times of solute and water traveling through a catchment. Natural
geochemical tracers, such as SO2-4, are used to improve hydrocarbon reservoir simulation
models. Introducing SO2-4 as a natural tracer and by tracking the injected seawater, it is possible
to identify underestimated fault lengths in the reservoir model. Heavy metal and metalloid
distributions in massive sulfide deposits can be used as indicators of the conditions of vent
deposit formation. Paleo-tracers such as 13C and Cd are useful to understand the enrichment of
nutrients in the oceans and seas in the geological past. REE distributions preserved in anhydrite
can be used as indicators of past magmatic acid volatile input.
GEOCHEMICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ELEMENTS
Geochemical distribution of elements is the distribution of the chemical elements within

the Earth in space and time. Knowledge of the geochemical distribution of the elements in the
Earth, particularly in the Earth's crust, and of the processes that lead to the observed
distributions make it possible to locate and use efficiently essential elements and minerals, and
to predict their dispersal patterns when they re-enter the natural environment after use.
To understand the present-day distribution of the elements in the Earth, it is necessary

to go back to the time of Earth formation ~4.5 billion years ago. It is generally believed that the
Earth and the other planets in the solar system formed by agglomeration of smaller fragments
of solid material orbiting around the Sun. This material had precipitated from a cooling hot gas
cloud (the solar nebula), with the most refractory materials condensing out first, the most
volatile last. The distribution of elements in the solar system in this early phase thus had much
to do with volatility, and the solid material that aggregated to form the planets was a mix of
volatile and nonvolatile materials.
Although the Earth may have been an approximately homogeneous mixture of accreted
materials at the time of its formation, it is now made of many chemically distinct parts. At the
fundamental level, these are the core, the mantle, and the crust. While chemical fractionation
in the solar nebula depended upon volatility, chemical differentiation within the Earth took
place by the separation of molten material from unmelted residue under the influence of
gravity. Because large amounts of energy were released from accreting fragments, the early
Earth was very hot, and during the accretion stage itself, temperatures in some parts exceeded
the melting point of iron metal. Pools of dense molten iron, with dissolved nickel and other
elements, aggregated and sank through the Earth under gravity to form the core, leaving
behind a mantle of silicate and oxide minerals. The present core constitutes about 32.4% of the
Earth's mass. The distinct parts of the Earth possess unique overall compositions.
ELEMENT DISTRIBUTION AMONG SOME OF THE MAJOR SUBDIVISIONS OF THE EARTH

Element Continental crust Oceanic crust Upper mantle Core
Oxygen 45.3 43.6 44.2 —
Silicon 26.7 23.1 21.0 —
Aluminium 8.39 8.47 1.75 —
Iron 7.04 8.16 6.22 85.5
Calcium 5.27 8.08 1.86 —
Magnesium 3.19 4.64 24.0 —
Sodium 2.29 2.08 0.25 —
Potassium 0.91 0.13 0.02 —
Titanium 0.68 1.12 0.11 —
Nickel 0.011 0.014 0.20 5.5
Sulfur NA NA NA 9.0
The large-scale distribution of the elements in the Earth depends on the affinity of each
element for specific compounds or phases. Those elements that alloy easily with iron, for
example, are mostly sequestered in the Earth's core; those which form oxides and silicate
minerals tend to be concentrated in the Earth's crust and mantle. Although many elements
display multiple characteristics depending on the chemical environment, a classification
according to geochemical affinity is nevertheless useful (Goldschmidt’s Classification).
Although geochemists have a good general knowledge of the overall distribution of

elements in the core and mantle, much more detailed information is available about the
chemical composition of the crust, which is accessible. The crust is actually composed of two
major parts with quite different compositions, thickness, and average age: the continental crust
and the oceanic crust.
Although all elements are present, the crust is made almost entirely of just nine
chemical elements: O, Si, Al, Fe, Mg, Ca, Na, K, and Ti. Oxygen and Si are by far the most
abundant. The most common minerals in the crust are those of the silicate family, in which the
basic building block is a silicon atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms in the form of a
tetrahedron. The crust is essentially a framework of oxygen atoms bound together by the
common cations.
A variety of processes act to make the crust chemically heterogeneous on many scales.
Many of these processes involve liquid water. Running water physically sorts particles
depending on size and density, which are ultimately related to chemical composition. It is also a
superb solvent, carrying many elements in solution under different conditions of temperature
and pressure, and depositing them when these conditions change. Processes involving water
account for many ore deposits, in which extreme concentrations of some elements occur
relative to their average abundance in the crust. One example is the circulating hydrothermal
solutions in volcanically active parts of the crust, which can leach metals from their normally
dispersed state in large volumes of volcanic rocks and deposit them in concentrated zones as
the solutions cool and encounter different rock types. Another example is the action of
weathering in tropical regions with high rainfall, which can leach away all but the least soluble
components from large volumes of rock, leaving behind mineral deposits rich in aluminum or,
depending on the original composition of the rocks being weathered, metals such as iron and
nickel.
COSMIC ABUNDANCE OF ELEMENTS
The average chemical and isotopic composition of the solar system is appropriately
referred to as cosmic, since this elemental abundance distribution is found to be nearly the
same for interstellar gas and for young stars associated with gas and dust in the spiral arms of
galaxies. The Sun makes up more than 99.9% of the mass of the solar system, so the bulk
chemical composition of the solar system is essentially the same as that of the Sun. The cosmic
abundances of the nonvolatile elements are determined from chemical analyses of a type of
meteorite known as C1 chondrites, whereas the relative abundances of the volatile elements
are determined from quantitative measurements of the intensities of elemental emission lines
from the Sun's photosphere. In most silicate-rich meteorites and the Earth, Moon, Venus, and
Mars, the most abundant elements are oxygen, Mg, Si, Fe, Al, and Ca. Average solar-system
composition consists of 70.7% H, 27.4% He, and only 1.9% of all remaining elements by weight,
Li to U. Cosmic abundances are now widely referred to as standard abundances in the
astrophysical literature.
Cosmic abundances of elements have several important uses. First, by comparing

cosmic abundances to chemical analyses of various types of meteorites, inferences can be
made about chemical fractionation processes that occurred in the primitive solar nebula, such
as condensation and vaporization. Also, by comparing them to rock compositions, inferences
can be made about processes that occurred early in the history of rocky planets, such as
separation of a metallic core and differentiation of silicates into mantle and crust. Second,
cosmic abundances serve as a standard of comparison for spectroscopic measurements of
elemental abundances of the photospheres of other stars and for measurements of elemental
and isotopic abundances in cosmic rays. Finally, nucleosynthesis occurs in many different stellar
environments. Explanations of nucleosynthesis must account for how elements and isotopes
from various astrophysical sources are made and then mixed to form the solar system's average
chemical and isotopic composition.

Geochem Distbn

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GEOCHEMICAL ANOMALY

It is defined as the above-average concentration of a chemical element in a sample of

GEOCHEMICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ELEMENTS

Geochemical distribution of elements is the distribution of the chemical elements within

To understand the present-day distribution of the elements in the Earth, it is necessary

ELEMENT DISTRIBUTION AMONG SOME OF THE MAJOR SUBDIVISIONS OF THE EARTH

Although geochemists have a good general knowledge of the overall distribution of

COSMIC ABUNDANCE OF ELEMENTS

Cosmic abundances of elements have several important uses. First, by comparing

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