Localization peculiarities of gold placers in the buried filled karst of intermountain depressions of the Southern Urals

Large megablocks of the South Urals are separated by longitudinal suture zones presented by long-lived negative morphostructures, which are inherited by intermountain erosional-karst depressions: Belskaya , Mindyakskaya, and Miasskaya. In intermountain depressions, the main interest for placer gold prospecting is related to the areas of paleovalleys of the Belaya, Mindyak, and Shartymka rivers especially to the karst placer gold traps associated with zones of increased fracturing and permeability at the junctions of submeridian and intersecting neotectonically active transverse faults. In the ore placer clusters of the Mindyakskaya and Miasskaya (southern part) depressions, manifestations of superimposed low-temperature gold-argillisite-jasperoid mineralization associated with one of the stages of the Mesozoic tectonic magmatic activation of the region have been established.