Drilling the Bushveld is continuing at a fast pace now, reaching 65 m within 2 days of drilling. In the coming days the drilling crew will set the casing. Wonderful cores containing pyroxenite have been recovered.
Just before the long holiday the engines were started and the drillers recovered the first core run of the Bushveld Drilling Project. Congratulations to Derik and his team!
In preparation of the BVDP (Bushveld Drilling Project) members of the ICDP operational support group and the Council for Geoscience held a training course on the ICDP database system mDIS (mobile Drilling Information System) at the South African National Core Library in Donkerhoek near Pretoria.
During their visit to Germany, the South African team also met with the Germany BVDP colleagues from GFZ Potsdam (Bob Trumbull and Ilya Veksler) and from the BGR in Hannover (Wilhelm Nikonow and Dieter Rammlmair). to discuss collaborative research and matters related to the upcoming drilling.
From September 11-14, BVDP scientists Frederick Roelofse and Justine Magson from the University of the Free State, South Africa, and Clement Ndou and Muneiwa Mukwhevo of the South African Council for Geoscience were in Berlin, Germany, to take part in the ICDP BASE project (Barberton Archean Surface Environments) sampling party. This was an excellent opportunity to learn from the sister project and interact with BASE scientists and young researchers. Huge thanks for the invitation from Prof Christoph Heubeck, PI of the BASE project.
The ICDP celebrated 25+ years of existence with a conference in Potsdam, Germany on July 21-23, 2023. The meeting was organized around four forward-looking Science Themes: “Geohazards, Georesources, Environmental Change, and Earth Evolution and Geodynamics”, as well as cross-topic initiatives related to the future of the ICDP. The Bushveld Drilling Project is the active ICDP project that addresses mineral resources. Its combination of drill cores donated by the mineral industry with new scientific drilling was highlighted as a model for collaboration of industry and academia.
Three members of the BVDP coordinating team, project PIs from South Africa and from Germany, as well as two young scientists from South Africa attended the 14th International Platinum Symposium in Cardiff, UK, over the period 4-7 July to present results of ongoing research and to give an update on the status of the project.
On June 25, 2023, the BVDP project team and Wits University issued a public tender for the drilling operation, the first milestone in getting our project underway. Part of the tender process was a visit to the prospective drill site at Marula Mine on July 20th. The visit was attended by a number of drilling and local community service companies, members of the BVDP team and Wits University Procurement office. We are grateful to the Marula Mine geological team for hosting us and preparing the prospective drill site for the visit.
In April, 2021 BVDP scientists at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein began logging 6000 -meters of donated drill cores from the Bushveld complex, marking the start of the first phase of operation. These drill cores cover the upper two-thirds of the 9 km-thick Bushveld layered intrusion and their donation by Impala Platinum Ltd. is a major contribution to the success of the project. Research projects from Germany and South Africa have been funded to commence work on the drill cores once the logging and documentation is completed. One goal is to identify breaks in the variation of density and mineral composition with height that may mark episodes of recharge into the magma chamber. Another is to develop methods to combine EDXRF (energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence), hyperspectral and LIBS (laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy) scanning to achieve rapid 2-D quantification of mineral modes, textures and composition.
