High-silica topaz-bearing rhyolites of Cenozoic emplaced as domes, lava flows or shallow intrusions. They age are widely distributed across the western USA and may also contain Fe-Mn garnet, beryl, bixbyite, pseudoMexico. They are characteristically enriched in fluorine brookite, hematite and fluorite in miarolitic cavities or with(>0.2 wt.%) and incompatible lithophile elements (e.g. Li, in th...

Introduction: The persistence of lithospheric thickness variations from its earliest era provides constraints on the thermal evolution of Mars [1,2]. Under these constraints, plausible thermal evolution models require cooling of the crust that could be accomplished by either hydrothermal cooling in a fractured portion of the upper crust or the existence of a stable stratified mantle where heat-...

soil productivity is generally associated with poor nutrient status and the physical condition of the soil, but the effect of soil mineralogy on soil productivity has received little attention. in this qualitative study, interactions between mineralogy and physico-chemistry and their role on the productivity of two luvisols, an arenosol and a vertisol are investigated. minerals identified in th...

We investigate the coupled effects of mineralogy and pressure on the dynamics of axisymmetric thermochemical plumes in the lower mantle, using both high resolution numerical experiments and simple analytical theory. We focus on the effect of composition on the compressibility which has not been studied before. Our results show that the effect of mineralogy is considerable: For relatively low Si...

Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) including nickel and chromium are often present in soils overlying basalt at concentrations above regulatory guidance values due to the presence of these elements in underlying geology. Oral bioaccessibility testing allows the risk posed by PTEs to human health to be assessed; however, bioaccessibility is controlled by factors including mineralogy, particle siz...

Mineralogy, microbial ecology, and mineral weathering in the subsurface are an intimately linked biogeochemical system. Although bacteria have been implicated indirectly in the accelerated weathering of minerals, it is not clear if this interaction is simply the coincidental result of microbial metabolism, or if it represents a speciŽ c strategy offering the colonizing bacteria a competitive ec...

Introduction: The two groups of enstatite chondrites (EH and EL) and aubrites, their differentiated counterparts, are a unique suite of specimens that formed under highly reducing conditions within the solar nebula, possibly on three separate parent bodies [1]. The reduced nature of the meteorites is shown by their unusual mineralogy, characterised by the presence of abundant sulphides. They al...

The detection of biomarkers plays a central role in our effort to establish whether there is, or was, life beyond Earth. In this review, we address the importance of considering mineralogy in relation to the selection of locations and biomarker detection methodologies with characteristics most promising for exploration. We review relevant mineral-biomarker and mineral-microbe interactions. The ...

[1] We have utilized optical constants derived from thermal infrared spectra acquired by the Mariner 9 Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer (M9 IRIS) and Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer (MGS TES), during periods of relatively high dust/low water ice opacity, to generate synthetic transmission and emission spectra of the atmospheric dust. Using libraries of transmission and em...

The complex interplay between depositional facies and diagenesis in dolostones presents numerous challenges for calculating petrophysical properties from wireline logs. Complex pore geometries and mineralogies control rock petrophysical properties, and equations for calculating porosities and saturations must therefore be tailored to specific pore geometry-mineralogy combinations. The complex m...