Specifics of the late cenozoic geochemical evolution of chloride calcium brines in the Olenek cryoartesian basin

Abstract

One of the probable mechanisms that controls the composition of highly mineralized chloride groundwaters is studied using physicochemical numerical simulations of equilibria in water–rock systems. Concentrated brines in the Olenek cryoartesian basin in the northeastern Siberian Platform are determined to be undersaturated with respect of major rock-forming minerals, which suggests that the metamorphosed sedimentary brines should have been diluted by meteoric waters during a certain evolutionary episode of the permafrost zone of the basin in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene.