New exploration progresses, resource potentials and prospecting targets of strategic minerals in the southern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

In recent one hundred years, the world has been undergoing great changes and the demand for strategic mineral resources has increased significantly. At present, an urgent task for China is to strengthen domestic strategic mineral exploration and ensure the supply of strategic mineral resources safely. The Gangdise-Himalayan orogenic belt, located at the southern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, is the key area for understanding the subduction of the Neo-Tethys oceanic crust, and the continental collision and large-scale metallogenesis between Asian and Indian plates. With the aid of analysis of the geologic and tectonic evolution and large-scale mineralization of the Gangdise-Himalayan orogeny, this study has systematically summarized the main types of strategic minerals and the important progresses of mineral prospecting in key metallogenic belts in Gangdise, Yarlung Zangbo Suture zone and Himalaya. The large-scale crust-mantle interaction and tectonic-magmatic evolution since the Cenozoic have resulted in the high enrichments of strategic mineral elements such as Cu, Cr, Au and Be. The Gangdise-Himalayan orogenic belt will play an important role in the resource allocation of strategic mineral resources of China, and several large ore concentration areas such as Qulong-Jiama, Junuo, Luobusha and Zhaxikang, are delineated as the key areas for the construction of strategic mineral succession resources bases in China. The emphasis of the future exploration should be on the explaration of new ore types and new mineral species in the deeper levels of existing deposits and the peripheries of the ore concentration areas.