Newly published maps add to knowledge of Brazil’s potential

Knowledge of Brazil’s geology made important advances in 2021, report two senior officials at the Geological Survey of Brazil (SGB-CPRM), its president, Esteves Colnago, and the director of geology and mineral resources, Márcio Remédio. Numerous maps, reports, technical and scientific articles, and new data bases were finalised in the course of the year and in addition, Colnago notes, “we have been active in strategic areas such as Carajás in Pará, Serra de Jacobina in Bahia, the Juma district in Amazonas, Granjeiro-Cococi in Ceará, and the Rio Grande Shield in Rio Grande do Sul.”

The Geological Survey also published in 2021 the initial findings of its project conducted in the area known as the Juruena-Teles Pires province, in the north of Mato Grosso, seen as the country’s leading emerging geological province for gold. It has now been raised to the status of a polymetallic province following discoveries of copper in association with gold and also of lead with zinc, and of silver with copper and gold.

“We released the first maps, the fruit of systematic mapping at a scale of 1:100,000, covering around 60,000 square kilometres [around 23,000 square miles] in the north of Mato Grosso,” Colnago says.

Progress was made, too, in projects to assess the potential for strategic minerals, a category that includes agrominerals such as phosphate, potash, and inputs for rock dust, and others needed by the technology industry, particularly graphite, lithium, cobalt, and rare earths.

Reports and favourability maps of mineral deposits were made available in 2021, following survey work conducted in several areas, notably the Potiguar Basin in Rio Grande do Norte (phosphate), the Paraná Basin in Rio Grande do Sul (inputs for rock dust), the Tapajós Province in Pará (gold), and the whole southeast sector of the Amazonia Craton, on both sides of the Pará-Mato Grosso state border. In this case, Marcio Remédio says, “our favourability map is for porphyry and hydrothermal copper systems, opening excellent prospects for areas that have not yet been fully explored.”

Read the whole article on Brazil Mineral Special Issue 2022