Volume and provenance of sediments in the Rotliegend Polish Trough - Southern Permian Basin

The Southern Permian Basins (SPB) have been extensively explored for ore deposits, yet the understanding of remaining undiscovered copper potential remains poorly constrained. This study employs goSPL, an open-source landscape and stratigraphic evolution model, to reconstruct the Permian sedimentary evolution of the Polish Trough in the southeastern SPB. To do so, we integrate paleogeographic reconstructions, sediment provenance analyses, and accumulation processes to assess the impacts of key tectonic events and paleoclimate on basin evolution. We simulate early sediment deposition under six tectonic regimes evaluating their influence on the provenance of the Upper Rotliegend red beds and their potential as a copper source for stratiform sediment-hosted copper deposits in the Kuperscheifer shale. Our results show that a variable subsidence scenario best matches observed sedimentation rates (~200 m/Myr), replicates the ~15 Myr hiatus found in the basin, and accurately captures depositional depth and sediment volumes (~19,000 km³), particularly during periods when the basin subsided below sea level. Provenance analyses indicate that sediments were predominantly sourced from the Bohemian and Carpathian Massifs, with up to 50% originating from the Fenno-Scandian Shield and Carpathian Massif during the Permian. Using paleo-lithology map, we estimate that approximately 1,000 km³ of sediments in the Upper Rotliegend red beds potentially held 50 to 155 Mt of ore which considerably discovered copper resource estimates in the basin. These findings highlight the importance of the red beds as a primary source for the Kupferschiefer copper deposits and suggest the red beds have potential for supplying additional undiscovered copper deposits. The method developed here can be used to assess red bed copper source potential for other basins worldwide, including those in frontier copper regions.