EXTECH II was initiated in the Bathurst area in 1994 because it was felt that without the discovery of new ore reserves, production from the Bathurst Camp would start to decline within seven years and with it, the principal source of economic activity in northeastern New Brunswick. The project has now been completed through a partnership involving industry, universities, New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources, United States Geological Survey and several divisions of GSC. Results have been delivered along the way by a series of papers, Open File releases, talks, workshops and field trips.

An Economic Geology Monograph entitled "Massive sulfide deposits of the Bathurst Mining Camp and Northern Maine", edited by W.D. Goodfellow, S.R. McCutcheon and J. Peter is available from the GSC Bookstore.

A third-party impact study of EXTECH II was commissioned by the Chief Scientist's Office of GSC. As for EXTECH I, it was clear that contributions by EXTECH II to the geoscience knowledge of Bathurst Mining Camp had stimulated additional exploration and helped to focus that exploration on likely targets. In particular, the impact study found the project to be excellently managed and estimated that an additional $3 million of exploration was being stimulated on an annual basis, over and above what would normally have been expected. Other previously recognized results and lessons learned include:

• re-mapped bedrock geology for the entire BMC at 1:20,000-scale and the release of 18 geological maps with major revisions to the stratigraphy and structure;

• unraveled the temporal and spatial relationship between back-arc continental rifting, anoxic bottom waters, magmatism, heat flow, hydrothermal activity, and sulphide formation.

• completed of the Quaternary geology of the BMC at 1:50,000-scale;

• eleased 95 multi-parameter geophysical maps from a high resolution (200 m line spacing) and multiparamter (magnetics, EM and radiometrics) airborne survey of the entire camp;

• prepared a comprehensive geophysical atlas illustrating the response of 20 massive sulphide deposits to different geophysical methods;

• released geochemical results for a comprehensive stream water and sediment, and vegetation survey of the northern BMC;

• defined vectors to mineralization using mineral and chemical zonation in altered rocks and hydrothermal sediments associated with massive sulphide deposit;

• characterized the form and distribution of indium at the Brunswick No. 12 deposit;

• improved the application of surficial geochemistry in mineral exploration by elucidating the pathways and processes by which metals are dispersed in streams, glacial till and vegetation from sulfide deposits;

• identified the Camelback massive sulphide deposit by a coincident EM and magnetic airborne geophysical anomaly;

• generated a digital, multiparameter, co-registered, internally consistent and attributed geoscience information database and archive for the BMC. This database was served over the internet as part of the ResSources GSC initiative.This site provides access to over 60 datasets compiled as part of the EXTECH II project. Users can pan and zoom to a spatial area of interest; identify features and report their non-spatial attributes; select features by querying their attributes; and generate custom views of data and new products.

Many management lessons learned from EXTECH II are being applied to EXTECH III, IV and other GSC projects.

Contacts: Wayne Goodfellow (GSC); Steve McCutcheon (NBDNR)