Patrick Rowe gives an indepth tour of the tectonic growth of the North American craton and the role that continental accretion plays in North American minerals and ore deposits.

Patrick holds several engineering degrees, all of which include a strong basis in geology and earth sciences. He worked at the Nevada Test Site for almost 25 years in mining and drilling operations for both weapons testing and waste disposal the Yucca Mountain highlevel nuclear waste repository site. Patrick is considered one the world’s foremost experts in shaft drilling, and works for the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Project Engineer.

Patrick has been collecting rocks and minerals for more than 40 years. He leads geology field trips for the Parajito Environmental Center and Future Rockhounds of America Pebble Pups Program. He is the currently the VicePresident for Field Trips for the Los Alamos Geological Society and has an impressive record of helping people and giving back to the community.
Presentation Topic

Patrick’s talk, Tectonic Growth of the North American Craton & Its Associated Basement Mineral Endowment, discusses the role that continental accretion plays in the availability of minerals forming ore deposits. His presentation pulls together the story of craton assembly and accretion from the Precambrian period (~2 billion years ago) to the present using a series of timeslice maps. He explains how this craton assembly and accretion has influenced our mineral endowment.

He helps us see mineral deposit systems in the context of whether they were formed (1) as part of the primary tectonic setting of basement domains, (2) by processes that thickened the original crust to form continental crust, or (3) in special cases, during multiple reactivations of crust and structures by younger, superposed orogenic events.

Its an amazing story, compressing billions of years into a very well organized presentation. Q&A begins at 41:22.

Patrick Rowe gave this talk at the June 7, 2023 meeting of the Mineralogical Society of the District of Columbia.