About John

I arrived at CSU in 2004 to take up what is now the Malcolm McCallum chair in Economic Geology after earlier teaching positions at the University of Zimbabwe, University of Western Australia, ETH Zurich, Macquarie University - Sydney, and the University of Bern. My regular teaching at CSU includes: GEOL 372 - Field Methods GEOL 447 - Mineral Deposits GEOL 547 - Ore Deposit Geochemistry and one section of the Geology Summer Field Camp.

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Interests

  • My current research interests and projects over the past few years have mainly centered around some contrasting questions: What are the large-scale controls on the chemistry and migration of hydrothermal fluids in the crust? Recent students of mine have studied the chemistry of fluids released from an Archean granite, the differences in the chemistries of fluids in intrusion-related gold deposits and veins in metamorphic rocks in central Alaska, the chemistry of fluids circulating around a granite in the gold-mining districts of Nevada, and ore-fluids in unusual alkaline magmatic centres. What do oil inclusions in Precambrian rocks tell us about early life, generation and migration of hydrocarbons in early Earth history, and the role of organic materials in ore deposition? The Mesoproterozoic Mid-continent Rift of the USA and its associated sedimentary-rock hosted copper deposits have been a focus of recent students in this area. What will be the geochemical legacy in the environment of mining activity and mining waste on a time-frame longer than the human life-span? The mineralogical changes that have taken place in historic mine wastes and in glacial debris are used to constrain long term field rates of breakdown and dissolution of ore sulfides.