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WATER HELPS TO FIND DIAMONDS

August 06, 2002

For many years geologists at the Research Institute of Geological and Geoecological Problems, Cheboksary, have been studying the River Karla region, which includes the south-western part of Chuvashia and a part of the Tatar Republic. The scientists used a new isotope-hydrogeochemical method, while searching for kimberlitic pipes. They achieved excellent results. They found five zones, which may be diamond pipes. These zones are in the range of a circular structure with the radius of 40 up to 50 kilometers. For a long time the scientists have paid special attention to the territory. It may contain the whole family of kimberlitic pipes. Chuvashia specialists have all the reasons to predict that a new diamond province will be discovered in the Central part of Russia soon. The region has a developed infrastructure and that will provide for high prospects of the diamond deposit.
In the eighties Moscow geologists found several small diamonds and minerals in the alluvia of the River Karla. Those were such minerals, as zircon, garnet, corundum and others. They always accompany kimberlitic tubes. It was then that Moscow geologists came to a conclusion that kimberlitic tubes may exist in the central part of the East European platform. But discovering the diamond deposit was not possible, for there were no precision methods, which could allow saying, what exactly there is under several hundred meters of rock. So Chuvashia scientists made use of the new invention of their Moscow colleagues Vladimir Polyakov and Maria Yezhova (All-Russia Research Institute of Geology), who worked it out and tested on the known deposits in Yakutia. The idea is that in the area of kimberlitic pipes there always run under-earth waters, in which the ratio of uranium isotopes is strictly fixed, while the content of zinc, lead, aluminum and zircon is increased. Using these data, the area can be contoured.
As a result, the scientists have got a map with five possible kimberlitic tubes and the diamond territory drawn on it. The territory partly includes the Tatar Republic. Kazan geologists have already started to search for kimberlitic tubes. They call the area "the potential diamond province of Tatarstan". The quality of the diamonds is not known yet. It is the prospecting that will give the answer to it.
It is interesting that the age of the explosion tubes is not high by geological standards. It is only several million years. Basing on the new data, the scientists have stated a hypothesis that about twenty-five million years ago there was a magma center, growing under the area. It warmed the higher rock layers and they started to break, forming a circular structure. Then the melted substance rushed up and burst out through the rock. A cavity with a lake in it appeared in the place of the explosion. The lake was for decades of million years been covering with the slime. And all of a sudden, the cooling off magma seat spit the rest of the substance in form of the explosion tubes. Water continues getting up through the tubes. Small water reservoirs are known to preserve on the top of kimberlitic tubes. The scientists managed to find a small lake near one of the villages, just above the supposed tube. According to the uranium-isotope data, the water in the lake is thirty percent deep water. It is in this place that the geologists suggest making holes and searching for a kimberlitic pipe.

Informnauka (Informscience) Agency