Magnetotelluric exploration of Zn-Pb mineralization in Stonepark

To meet the objectives of the European Green Deal, Europe requires an increase in the supply of raw materials. To extract these materials responsibly and sustainably the complex social, environmental and technical challenges and how they interact need to be understood. The EU funded project VECTOR aims to assess these challenges and integrate them to produce human centred solutions. In this framework, minimally disruptive geological and geophysical studies have been carried out at three different locations across Europe. Stonepark is one of these locations located in the Irish Midlands in the Limerick Basin. The area includes potentially economic ore pods within Carboniferous carbonates and volcanic rocks.

In Stonepark, new MT data were collected at a total of 108 sites in an area of 1.2 km x 5 km, of which 33 sites were equipped with five-component broad-band MT stations in concert with 75 two-component stations recording only the electric fields. The novel experimental layout using mobile electric field only stations sped up fieldwork while still allowing the use of local and remote reference techniques. Major goal of the study is to assess the utility MT techniques for mineral exploration at depth in sedimentary basins. In particular, we aim to quantify the 3D electrical conductivity distribution of the top 1–5 km of the crust from new MT data, in order to determine the location of electrically conductive ore mineralization.

This data publication (https://doi.org/10.5880/GIPP-MT.202223.1) encompasses a detailed report in pdf format with a description of the project, information on the experimental setup, data collection, instrumentation used, recording configuration and data quality. The folder structure and content of the data repository are described in detail in Ritter et al. (2019). Time-series data are provided in EMERALD format (Ritter et al., 2015).