Paul Dennis edited discussion_fluids.tex  over 8 years ago

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One can legitimately question the model details and parameter estimates but the point of this somewhat heuristic approach is not to be an accurate model. It is to give an indication of the flow rates that are needed to sustain the maximum observed thermal anomaly within the Dirtlow Rake and Castleton fault assuming a physical system that couples fluid overpressure and faulting. That the model may only be accurate to within a factor of 5 to 10 does not invalidate the central result that the fluid release must occur as pulses of short duration to sustain the thermal anomaly.  A corollary of the pulsed nature of fluid release is that mineralization is episodic with separate events spanning limited periods up to several thousand to several ten thousand years separated by periods of stasis. This observation is convergent with recent data on the Zn content of mineralizing fluids determined from fluid inclusions in several MVT provinces that suggests mineralization events could be of durations as short as 10,000 years \citep{Bodnar:2009hc, Wilkinson06022009}.  \[\Delta = \alpha \times \beta \]