Over the past 10 years, Australia has maintained 65-85% self-sufficiency in oil and better than 100% suffiency in gas. This has generated significant societal benefits in terms of employment, balance of payments, and revenue. However the decline of the super-giant Gippsland fields, discovery of smaller oil pools on the Northwest Shelf, and the increasing reliance on condensate to sustain our liquids supply sharpens the focus on Australia's need to increase exporation and discover more oil. Australia is competing in the global market place for exploration funds but as it is relatively under-explored there is a need to simulate interest through access to pre-competitive data and information. Public access to exploration and production data is a key plank in Australian promotion of petroleum exploration acreage. Access results from legislation that initially subsidised exploration in return for lodgement and public availability of exploration and production (E&P) data. Today publicly available E&P data ranges from digital seismic tapes, to core and cuttings samples from wells, and access to relational databases, including organic geochemistry, biostratigraphy, and shows information. Seismic information is being progressively consolidated to high density media. Under the Commonwealth Government?s Spatial Information and Data Access Policy, announced in 2001, company data is publicly available at the cost of transfer, after a relatively brief confidentiality period. In addition, pre-competitive regional studies relating to petroleum prospectivity, undertaken by Government, and databases and spatial information is free over the Internet, further reducing the cost of exploration. In cooperation with the Australian States and the Northern Territory, we are working towards jointly presenting Australian opportunities through the Geoscience Portal (http://www.geoscience.gov.au) and a virtual one stop data repository. The challenge now is to translate data availability to increased exploration uptake, through client information, and through ever-improving on-line access.

No abstract available

Seafloor bathymetric data and its derivatives fulfil a range of applications that are relevant to supporting the management of marine ecosystems and can provide a potentially powerful physical surrogate for benthic biodiversity. Similarly, morphological and seafloor terrain variables such as slope, curvature and rugosity derived from bathymetry data through GIS analysis not only describe seabed morphology but can also act as proxies for oceanographic processes The distributions of benthic marine fauna and flora most commonly respond to local changes in the topography of the seafloor. When seafloor topography is coupled with biological surveys it can help managers understand which environments contribute most to the growth, reproduction and survival of marine species. These models of habitat suitability provide natural resource managers with a tool with which to visualise the potential habitats of particular species. The accuracy of the habitat suitability models however, is critically reliant on the accuracy of underlying bathymetric data. The uncertainty in the bathymetric data is often ignored and often there is little recognition that the input bathymetric data and the derived spatial data products of the bathymetric data are merely modelled representations of one reality. These models can contain significant levels of uncertainty that are dependent upon the original depth measurements. This research paper explores a method to represent the uncertainty in bathymetric data. We discover that multibeam bathymetry data uncertainties are stochastic at individual soundings but exhibit a distinct spatial distribution with increasing magnitude from nadir to outer beams. We find that the restricted spatial randomness method is able to realistically simulate both the stochastic and spatial characteristics of the data uncertainty. This research concludes that the Monte Carlo method is appropriate for the uncertainty analysis of GIS operations and although the multibeam bathymetry data have notable overall uncertainty level, its impact on subsequent derivative analysis is likely to be minor in this dataset at the 2 m scale. Monitoring and change detection of the seafloor requires detailed baseline data with uncertainty estimates to ensure that features that display change are reliably detected. The accuracy of marine habitat maps and their associated levels of uncertainty are extremely hard to convey visually or to quantify with existing methodologies. The new techniques developed in this research integrate existing statistical techniques in a novel way to improve insights into classification and related uncertainty for seabed habitat maps which will progress and improve resource management for regional and national ocean policy.

Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) dinoflagellate cysts from the Timor Sea, offshore north-western Australia include several undescribed forms. Of these, three genera, Hadriana, Mombasadinium and Striatodinium, and seven new species described as new. The new dinoflagellate cyst species are Craspedodinium swanense, Cribroperidinium corrugatum, Gonyaulacysta fenestrata, Hadriana cincta, Oligosphaeridium swanense, Striatodinium lineatum and Striatodinium ottii. The genus Craspedodinium and the species Indodinium khariense are emended. The species formerly known as Indodinium? parvelatum is transferred to the new genus Mombasadinium and is also emended. All these new dinoflagellate cyst taxa have stratigraphical utility in the Kimmeridgian Dingodinium swanense Zone of Australia.

This is an article summarising of the earthquake hazard work for 2009-10 for the society's newsletter.

The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) at the Australian National University (ANU) has co-located a priority set of over 10 PetaBytes (PBytes) of national data collections within a HPC research facility. The facility provides an integrated high-performance computational and storage platform, or a High Performance Data (HPD) platform, to serve and analyse the massive amounts of data across the spectrum of environmental collections in particular from the climate, environmental and geoscientific domains. The data is managed in concert with the government agencies, major academic research communities and collaborating overseas organisations. By co-locating the vast data collections with high performance computing environments and harmonising these large valuable data assets, new opportunities have arisen for Data-Intensive interdisciplinary science at scales and resolutions not hitherto possible.

Abstract: The multiply-deformed (D1-D3) Palaeoproterozoic Willyama Supergroup in south-central Australia incorporates upper and lower ca. 1700 Ma metasedimentary sequences with contrasting early tectonothermal histories that invite comparisons with the metamorphic core complexes and younger extensional orogens of western North America and Europe. A detachment surface of D1 age separating these two sequences has the deduced geometry of an extensional shear zone, juxtaposing rocks subjected to bimodal magmatism, sillimanite to granulite grade migmatisation, and Na-Fe metasomatism against a less intensely metamorphosed upper plate lacking both migmatites and bimodal magmatism. Syn-extensional metamorphism took place under low pressure-high temperature conditions, producing regionally extensive andalusite- and sillimanite-bearing mineral assemblages before further high grade metamorphism accompanying D2 recumbent folding and crustal thickening. D2 folding locally inverted the original D1 thermal structure so that sillimanite-grade lower plate rocks now lie structurally above andalusite-grade rocks of the upper plate, rendering recognition of the original detachment surface and associated thermal structure difficult. U/Pb dating of synextensional metabasites intruded into lower plate rocks just below the detachment surface indicate that extension and related bimodal magmatism peaked around 1690-1670 Ma. This is 70-90 m.y. earlier than some previously published 1600-1590 Ma ages for the onset of regional deformation and related low P-high T metamorphism and which we equate with events that overprinted the first phase of deformation and metamorphism at 1690-1670 Ma. A regionally extensive redox boundary associated with the detachment surface served as the locus for fluid flow and Pb-Zn mineralisation.

The Bight Basin contains a thick, prospective Jurassic-Cretaceous sedimentary section. Recent work by both Geoscience Australia and the petroleum exploration industry has increased our understanding of the structural and stratigraphic development, and the range of opportunities available in this frontier basin. The presence of thick deltaic units and indications of active petroleum systems further enhance its prospectivity. Although the basin is being tested by new drilling it remains one of the least explored passive margins in the world, and will require much more exploration to fully assess its potential.

Subduction of oceanic crust at an unusually low angle (flat-subduction) has been proposed as a general model for the growth of continental crust older than about 2.5 Ga. At modern zones of flat subduction, magmatic additions to new crust come from partial melting of both the subducting oceanic crust (slab) and the thin wedge of mantle above the slab. Evidence for both a slab and wedge source is commonly preserved in some, but not all, late Archaean (3.0-2.5 Ga) terrains, but we find little evidence that a mantle wedge contributed to early Archaean (>3.0 Ga) crustal growth. In contrast to most modern terrains and some late-Archaean terrains, early Archaean continental crust evolved through direct melting of thick mafic crust.

The northern Pedirka Basin in the Northern Territory is sparsely explored compared with its southern counterpart in South Australia. Only seven wells and 2500 km of seismic data occur over a prospective area of 73,000 km2. In this basin three petroleum systems have potential related to important source intervals in the basal Jurassic (Poolowanna Formation), Triassic (Peera Peera Formation) and Early Permian (Purni Formation). They are variably developed in three prospective depocentres, the Eringa Trough, the Madigan Trough and the northern Poolowanna Trough. New basin modelling techniques indicate oil and gas expulsion responded to increasing early Late Cretaceous temperatures in part due to sediment loading (Winton Formation). Using a composite kinetic model, oil and gas expulsion from coal rich source rocks were largely coincident at this time when source rocks entered the wet gas maturation window. The Purni Formation coals provide the richest source rocks and equate to the lower Patchawarra Formation in the Cooper Basin. Widespread well intersections indicate that glacial outwash sandstones at the base of the Purni Formation, herein referred to as the Tirrawarra Sandstone, have regional extent and are an important exploration target as well as providing a direct correlation with the prolific Patchawarra/ Tirrawarra petroleum system found in the Cooper Basin. An integrated investigation into the hydrocarbon charge and migration history of Colson-1 was carried out using CSIRO Petroleum's OMI (Oil Migration Intervals), QGF (Quantitative Grain Fluorescence) and GOI (Grains with Oil Inclusions) technologies. In the basal Jurassic Poolowanna Formation between 1984 and 2054 mRT, elevated QGF intensities, evidence of oil inclusions and abundant fluorescencing material trapped in quartz grains and low displacement pressure measurements collectively indicate the presence of palaeo-oil and gas accumulation over this 70 m interval. This is consistent with the current oil show indications such as staining, cut fluorescence, mud gas and surface solvent extraction within this reservoir interval. Multiple hydrocarbon migration pathways are also indicated in sandstones of the lower Algebuckina Sandstone, basal Poolowanna Formation and Tirrawarra Sandstone. This is a significant upgrade in hydrocarbon prospectivity, given previous perceptions of relatively poor quality and largely immature source rocks in the Basin. Conventional structural targets are numerous but the timing of hydrocarbon expulsion dictates that those with an ?older? drape and compaction component will be more prospective than those dominated by Tertiary reactivation which may have resulted in remigration or leakage. Preference should also apply to those structures adjacent to generative source ?kitchens? on relatively short migration pathways. Early formed Tirrawarra Sandstone and Poolowanna Formation stratigraphic traps are also attractive targets. Cyclic sedimentation in the Poolowanna Formation results in two upward fining cycles which compartmentalise the sequence into two reservoir ? seal configurations. Basal fluvial sandstone reservoirs grade upwards into topset shale/ coal lithologies which form effective semi-regional seals. Onlap of the basal cycle onto the Late Triassic unconformity offers opportunities for stratigraphic entrapment.