Fang Huang

CSIRO Mineral Resources

Critical metals exploration in Australia, such as for pegmatite-hosted lithium (Li), is expanding to areas of extensive regolith cover. Machine learning (ML)-supported workflows have the potential to help produce geologically meaningful layers for advanced regolith and bedrock mapping and narrow down the search space for Li-bearing pegmatites.

Drill hole geochemical data can provide non-subjective information for constraining 3D geology models, which are important tools used by geologists to understand subsurface geological architecture. The scales of geology models vary depending on their purpose because geological elements can exhibit different spatial forms, structures, and details at...

The ability to reliably automate the identification of rock types from drill hole samples has the potential to revolutionise geological logging, making it fast and consistent. The first step in automation is to collect accurate numerical data and the second step is to use algorithms to process the data and provide geologically meaningful outputs. M...

Saturn’s moon Enceladus has a potentially habitable subsurface water ocean that contains canonical building blocks of life (organic and inorganic carbon, ammonia, possibly hydrogen sulfide) and chemical energy (disequilibria for methanogenesis). However, its habitability could be strongly affected by the unknown availability of phosphorus (P). Here...

The development of analytical and computational techniques and growing scientific funds collectively contribute to the rapid accumulation of geoscience data. The massive amount of existing data, the increasing complexity, and the rapid acquisition rates require novel approaches to efficiently discover scientific stories embedded in the data related...

Minerals contain important clues to understanding the complex geologic history of Earth and other planetary bodies. Therefore, geologists have been collecting mineral samples and compiling data about these samples for centuries. These data have been used to better understand the movement of continental plates, the oxidation of Earth's atmosphere an...

Serpentinization refers to the alteration of ultramafic rocks that produces serpentines and secondary (hydr)oxides under hydrothermal conditions. Serpentinization can generate H2, which in turn can potentially reduce CO/CO2 and produce organic molecules via Fischer–Tropsch type (FTT) and Sabatier type reactions. Over the last two decades, serpentin...

The origin of methane and light hydrocarbons (HCs) in natural fluids from serpentinization has commonly been attributed to the abiotic reduction of oxidized carbon by H2 through Fischer-Tropsch-type (FTT) reactions. Multiple experimental serpentinization studies attempted to identify the parameters that control the abiotic production of H2, CH4, an...

Diamonds containing fluid inclusions provide invaluable samples of upper mantle fluids, the study of which illuminates not only diamond formation but also the long-term evolution of the subcratonic, lithospheric mantle. The very large range of inclusion compositions worldwide has been interpreted to represent four end-member fluids: saline (rich in...

Several lines of evidence point to low rates of net primary production (NPP) in Archean oceans. However, whether Archean NPP was limited by electron donors or nutrients, particularly phosphorus (P), and how these factors might have changed over a billion years of recorded Archean history, remains contentious. One major challenge is to understand qu...

Arc magmas are thought to be generated by partial melting of the mantle wedge above the subduction slab, which is triggered by the fluids from the dehydration of subducting oceanic crust. Among the dehydration reactions, those occurring at the depths of the blueschist-to-eclogite transition are considered to be very important. The sodium amphibole...

Phosphorus (P) is the key nutrient thought to limit primary productivity on geological timescales. Phosphate levels in Archean marine sediments are low, but quantification of the P cycle and how it changed through a billion years of recorded Archean history remain a challenge, hindering our understanding of the role played by P in biosphere/geosphe...

Serpentinization refers to the hydrothermal alteration of ultramafic rocks (e.g. peridotite) in which ferromagnesian silicate minerals react with water to dominantly precipitate serpentine and (hydr)oxides while producing hydrogen (H2). In natural systems, various amounts of methane (CH4) and other reduced carbon compounds are also observed in flui...

Data cleansing, also known as data cleaning, is the process of identifying and addressing problems in raw data to improve data quality (Fox, 2018). Data quality is broadly defined as the precision and accuracy of data, which can significantly influence the information interpreted from the data (Broeck et al., 2005). Data quality issues usually invo...

Data Processing (DP) refers to the extraction of information through organizing, indexing and manipulating data. Information here means valuable relationships and patterns that can help solve problems of interest. In history, the capability and efficiency of DP have been improving with the advancement of technology. Processing involving intensive h...

Fluids in the deep crust and upper mantle appear to have played roles in the long-term evolution of the subcratonic lithospheric mantle and the stabilities of the continents, in the geochemical cycles of the elements from subduction zones to Earth's surface environment, and in the formation of diamonds. Much evidence of the chemistry of deep fluids...

The key to answering many compelling and complex questions in Earth, planetary, and life science lies in breaking down the barriers between scientific fields and harnessing the integrated, multidisciplinary power of Earth, planetary, and bioscience data resources. We have a unique opportunity to integrate large and rapidly expanding "big data" reso...

Chromium is mobile in ultramafic magmas but its mobility in high temperature fluids has long been unclear. Studies of some chromium-rich ophiolites have suggested chromium mobility in upper mantle fluids. However, the mechanism is poorly understood because Cr(III) is so insoluble in water. We used previous estimates of aqueous Cr species and publis...

Geologists and geology enthusiasts have been collecting mineral samples and compiling data about these samples for as long as we can remember. Datasets like those found at ‘RRUFF.info’ and ‘Mindat.org’ have documented almost all the known mineral localities in the world. One of the Deep Time Data Infrastructure (http://dtdi.carnegiescience.edu/) pr...

The Census of Deep Life (CoDL), a central pillar of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO), aims to investigate the diversity, distribution and biogeography of the subsurface biosphere. Over two dozen marine and terrestrial subsurface habitats were surveyed with over three hundred samples. The associated metadata have the potential to identify the envir...

The cycling of carbon between Earth's surface and interior governs the long-term habitability of the planet. But how carbon migrates in the deep Earth is not well understood. In particular, the potential role of hydrocarbon fluids in the deep carbon cycle has long been controversial. Here we show that immiscible isobutane forms in situ from partial...

Diamond formation has typically been attributed to redox reactions during precipitation from fluids or magmas. Either the oxidation of methane or the reduction of carbon dioxide has been suggested, based on simplistic models of deep fluids consisting of mixtures of dissolved neutral gas molecules without consideration of aqueous ions. The role of p...

Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Tables 1-2, Supplementary Note 1 and Supplementary Reference.

Supercritical aqueous fluids link subducting plates and the return of carbon to Earth's surface in the deep carbon cycle. The amount of carbon in the fluids and the identities of the dissolved carbon species are not known, which leaves the deep carbon budget poorly constrained. Traditional models, which assume that carbon exists in deep fluids as d...