Sulfide Mineralogy and Geochemistry

摘要

Volume 61 of the MSA's influential Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry series seems, at first glance, to be a reprise of Volume 1, published in 1974 under the title Sulfide Mineralogy. However, a closer look quickly reveals just how far sulfide mineral studies have come in the succeeding 32 years. A few chapters have similar titles; for example, chapters on crystal structures, chemical bonding, and phase equilibria, but the chapter contents of Volume 61 are both up-to-date and major advances on their predecessors. The biggest difference between Volumes 1 and 61 is not the updating of older topics, but the new areas of research that have emerged and that are treated in depth in Volume 61. Surface chemistry of sulfides, for example, which is discussed in two chapters by Rosso and Vaughan, has emerged as a vibrant area of research for practical reasons such as sulfide mineral oxidation and acid mine drainage, and for scientific reasons because new, high-resolution tools have been developed that are ideal for studying surfaces on an atomic scale. Sulfur isotope geochemistry was in its infancy when Volume 1 was written. Today, sulfur isotopes have become key research tools for studies ranging from the chemistry of ore deposits to the evolution of Earths atmosphere. In Volume 61, sulfur isotopes are reviewed in a concisely elegant chapter by Seal. Another new topic in Volume 61 concerns sulfide minerals in biosystems. The knowledge that some sulfide minerals form as a consequence of biological activities is certainly not new, but discoveries of deep-sea sulfide chimneys, and the realization that life might have first arisen on a sulfide mineral surface in such an environment, has heightened studies of biologically mediated sulfide reactions.