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The Jiaodong Peninsula in eastern China is the third largest gold-mining area and one of the most important orogenic gold provinces in the world. Ore shoots plunging in specific orientations are a ubiquitous feature of the Jiaodong lode deposits. The Sizhuang gold deposit, located in northwestern Jiaodong, is characterized by orebodies of different occurrences. The orientation of ore shoots has remained unresolved for a long time. In this paper, geostatistical tools were used to determine the plunge and structural control of ore shoots in the Sizhuang deposit. The ellipses determined by variogram modeling reveal the anisotropy of mineralization, plus the shape, size, and orientation of individual ore shoots. The long axes of the anisotropy ellipses trend NE or SEE and plunge 48&deg, NE down the dip. However, individual ore shoots plunge almost perpendicular to the plunge of the ore deposit as a whole. This geometry is interpreted to have resulted from two periods of fluid flow parallel to two sets of striations that we identified on ore-controlling faults. Thrust-related lineations with a sinistral strike-slip component were associated with early-stage mineralization. This was overprinted by dextral and normal movement of the ore-controlling fault that controlled the late-stage mineralization. This kinematic switch caused a change in the upflow direction of ore-forming fluid, which in turn controlled the orientation of the large-scale orebodies and the subvertical plunge of individual ore shoots. Thus, a regional transition from NW-to-SE-trending compression to NW-to-SE-trending extension is interpreted as the geodynamic background of the ore-forming process. This research exemplifies an effective exploration strategy for studying the structural control of the geometry, orientation, and grade distribution of orebodies via the integration of geostatistical tools and structural analysis.

The Sizhuang gold deposit with a proven gold resource of &gt, 120 t, located in northwest Jiaodong Peninsula in China, lies in the southern part of the Jiaojia gold belt. Gold mineralization can be divided into altered rock type, auriferous quartz vein type, and sulfide-quartz veinlet in K-feldspar altered granite. According to mineral paragenesis and mineral crosscutting relationships, three stages of metal mineralization can be identified: early stage, main stage, and late stage. Gold mainly occurs in the main stage. The petrography and microthermometry of fluid inclusion shows three types of inclusions (type 1 H2O&ndash, CO2 inclusions, type 2 aqueous inclusions, and type 3 CO2 inclusions). Early stage quartz-hosted inclusions have a trapped temperatures range 303&ndash, 390 &deg, C. The gold-rich main stage contains a fluid-inclusion cluster with both type 1 and 2 inclusions (trapped between 279 and 298 &deg, C), and a wide range of homogenization temperatures of CO2 occurs to the vapor phase (17.6 to 30.5 &deg, C). The late stage calcite only contains type 1 inclusions with homogenization temperatures between 195 and 289 &deg, C. With evidences from the H&ndash, O isotope data and the study of water&ndash, rock interaction, the metamorphic water of the Jiaodong Group is considered to be the dominating source for the ore-forming fluid. The ore-fluid belonged to a CO2&ndash, H2O&ndash, NaCl system with medium-low temperature (160&ndash, 360 &deg, C), medium-low salinity (3.00&ndash, 11.83 wt% NaCl eq.), and low density (1.51&ndash, 1.02 g/cm3). Fluid immiscibility caused by pressure fluctuation is the key mechanism in inducing gold mineralization in the Sizhuang gold deposit.