HVC - High Value Collection
Type of resources
Keywords
Publication year
Topics
-
This data collection is comprised of radiometric (gamma-ray spectrometric) surveys acquired across Australia by Commonwealth, State and Northern Territory governments and the private sector with project management and quality control undertaken by Geoscience Australia. The radiometric method measures naturally occurring radioactivity arising from gamma-rays. In particular, the method is able to identify the presence of the radioactive isotopes potassium (K), uranium (U) and thorium (Th). The measured radioactivity is then converted into concentrations of the radioelements K, U and Th in the ground. Radiometric surveys have a limited ability to see into the subsurface with the measured radioactivity originating from top few centimetres of the ground. These surveys are primarily used as a geological mapping tool as changes in rock and soil type are often accompanied by changes in the concentrations of the radioactive isotopes of K, U and Th. The method is also capable of directly detecting mineral deposits. For example, K alteration can be detected using the radiometric method and is often associated with hydrothermal ore deposits. Similarly, the method is also used for U and Th exploration, heat flow studies, and environmental mapping purposes such as characterising surface drainage features. The instrument used in radiometric surveys is a gamma-ray spectrometer. This instrument measures the number of radioactive emissions (measured in counts per second) and their energies (measured in electron volts (eV)). Radiometric data are simultaneously acquired with magnetic data during airborne surveys and are a non-invasive method for investigating near-surface geology and regolith.
-
A collection of geological samples associated with drilling activities and submitted by companies under the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 (OPGGSA) and previous legislations that required petroleum data to be submitted to the National Offshore Petroleum Data and Core Repository (NOPDCR). The collection also contains cores and cuttings samples acquired by Geoscience Australia and its predecessor BMR, other government agencies and institutions from around Australia. <b>Value: </b>Information related to the subsurface that have the potential to support geological investigations and assessment of a variety of resources. <b>Direct access</b> to petroleum mining sample information is available on National Offshore Petroleum Information Management System (NOPIMS) platform (https://www.ga.gov.au/nopims) via the Core Library tab. <b>Request to access</b> those samples can also be made via the form available on NOPIMS. https://nopims.dmp.wa.gov.au/Nopims/RequestForms/CoreCuttingsAccess/CoreCuttingsAccess
-
Geoscience Australia's Australian National Hydrocarbon Geochemistry Data Collection comprises Oracle database tables from the Organic Geochemistry (ORGCHEM) schema and derivative information in the Petroleum Systems Summary database (Edwards et al., 2020, 2023; Edwards and Buckler, 2024). The ORGCHEM schema includes organic geochemistry, organic petrology and stable isotope database tables that capture the analytical results from sample-based datasets used for the discovery and evaluation of sediment-hosted resources. A focus is to capture open file data relevant to energy (i.e., petroleum and hydrogen) exploration, including source rocks, crude oils and natural gases from both onshore and offshore Australian sedimentary basins. The database tables also include complementary physical properties and complementary inorganic analyses on sedimentary rocks and hydrocarbon-based earth materials. The data are produced by a wide range of destructive analytical techniques conducted on samples submitted by industry under legislative requirements, as well as on samples collected by research projects undertaken by Geoscience Australia, other government agencies and scientific institutions. Some of these results have been generated by Geoscience Australia, whereas other data are compiled from service company reports, well completions reports, government reports, published papers and theses. The data is non-confidential and available for use by Government, the energy exploration industry, research organisations and the community. The Petroleum Systems Summary database stores the compilation of the current understanding of petroleum systems information, including the statistical evaluation of the analytical data by basin across the Australian continent. <b>Value: </b>These data in the ORGCHEM database tables comprise the raw organic geochemistry, organic petrological and stable isotopic values generated for Australian source rocks, crude oils and natural gases and is the only public comprehensive database at the national scale. The raw data are used as input values to other studies, such as basin analysis, petroleum systems evaluation and modelling, resource assessments, enhanced oil recovery projects, and national mapping projects. Derived datasets and value-add products are created based on calculated values and interpretations to provide information on the subsurface petroleum prospectivity of the Australian continent, as summarised in the Petroleum Systems Summary database. The data collection aspires to build a national scale understanding of Australia's petroleum and hydrogen resources. This data collection is useful to government for evidence-based decision making on sediment-hosted energy resources and the energy industry for de-risking both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon exploration programs, hydrogen exploration programs, and carbon capture, utilisation and storage programs. <b>Scope: </b>The database initially comprised organic geochemical and organic petrological data on organic-rich sedimentary rocks, crude oils and natural gas samples sourced from petroleum wells drilled in the onshore and offshore Australian continent, including those held in the Australian National Offshore Wells Data Collection. Over time, other sample types (e.g., fluid inclusions, mineral veins, bitumen) from other borehole types (e.g., minerals, stratigraphic including the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, and coal seam gas), marine dredge samples and field sites (outcrop, mines, surface seepage samples, coastal bitumen strandings) have been analysed for their molecular and stable isotopic chemical compositions and are captured in the databases. The organic geochemical database tables and derivative data compiled in the Petroleum Systems Summary database are delivered by web services and analytical tools in the <a href="https://portal.ga.gov.au/">Geoscience Australia Data Discovery Portal </a> and specifically in the <a href="https://portal.ga.gov.au/persona/sra">Source Rock and Fluid Atlas Persona</a>. These web services enable interrogation of source rock and petroleum fluids data within boreholes and from field sites and facilitate correlation of these elements of the petroleum system within and between basins. <b>Reference</b> Edwards, D.S., Buckler, T., Grosjean, E. & Boreham, C.J. 2024. Organic Geochemistry (ORGCHEM) Database. Australian Source Rock and Fluid Atlas. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/149422 Edwards, D., Hawkins, S., Buckler, T., Cherukoori, R., MacFarlane, S., Grosjean, E., Sedgmen, A., Turk, R. 2023. Petroleum Systems Summary database. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. https://dx.doi.org/10.26186/148979 Edwards, D.S., MacFarlane, S., Grosjean, E., Buckler, T., Boreham, C.J., Henson, P., Cherukoori, R., Tracey-Patte, T., van der Wielen, S.E., Ray, J., Raymond, O. 2020. Australian source rocks, fluids and petroleum systems – a new integrated geoscience data discovery portal for maximising data potential. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/133751.
-
The national standard lexicon of geologic units, including: age, lithology, geologic relationships for all Australian geological units, and a record of their use in literature. Links to Geological Provinces and Geological Maps. The collection is maintained by Geoscience Australia on behalf of the Australian Stratigraphy Commission, a standing committee of the Geological Society of Australia. <b>Value: </b>The lexicon standardises terminology for geologic units, thereby enabling integration of different geologic studies and datasets. <b>Scope: </b>Covers all Australian Territories, including Australia's Antarctic Territories. The database contains over 17,500 current stratigraphic names and over 36,000 variations, most of which are superseded, obsolete, or misspelt versions of the current names. The publicly accessible portion of this collection is made available through the Australian Stratigraphic Units Database (ASUD), the national authority on stratigraphic names in Australia and can be accessed here: <a href="https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/21884">https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/21884</a>
-
Descriptions of and measurements from field sites and samples from geological (including regolith) surveys. <b>Value: </b>Used to constrained surface geology, important in resource exploration and understanding physical environment. <b>Scope: </b>Mapping surveys mainly in Australia, but also in Antarctica, Oceania and south-east Asia.
-
This collection supports the compilation of national mineral resource and production statistics, and mineral prospectivity analysis. The collection includes the location of Australian mineral occurrences and mineral deposit descriptions, with geological, resource and production data. This information is stored in two Geoscience Australia databases, the Mineral Deposits & Occurrences Database (OZMIN) and the Mineral Occurrence Locations (MINLOC) database. The collection also includes a number of supporting Geographic Information System (GIS) datasets (e.g., mineral prospectivity datasets, ports, power stations); maps and reports. <b>Value:</b> Data related to the known location and production of mineral resources supports decisions related to resource and economic development. <b>Scope: </b>The collection covers the Australian continent and is updated annually. It now contains data on over one thousand major and historically significant mineral deposits for 60 mineral commodities (including coal).
-
Geoscience Australia houses one of the world's largest collections of petroleum data. Much of this data is non-confidential and available to the petroleum industry, research organisations and the public. The collection includes well data submitted by industry under legislative requirements as well as data collected by research projects and marine surveys undertaken by Geoscience Australia or other government agencies or institutions. The collections comprise of digital data such as well completion reports, well logs, destructive analysis reports, vertical seismic profiles, core photography, special studies and also hard-copy well log data and graphs submitted during the pre-digital era. <b>Value: </b> information related to the subsurface that have the potential to support geological investigations and assessment of a variety of resources. <b>This data can be discovered through the National Offshore Petroleum Information Management System (NOPIMS) - https://www.ga.gov.au/nopims</b>
-
Document distribution and location of a variety of built infrastructure features, including: ports, power stations, electricity transmission lines and substations. <b>Value: </b>These locations are not authoritative or comprehensive, but represent a valuable resource for visualisation, decision support and planning activities. <b>Scope: </b>National dataset at resolution relevant for presentation of regional spatial data such as digital maps or regional decision making, ie., does not include many small scale or local distribution infrastructure types such as lines to houses.
-
Geoscience Australia (GA) has acquired Landsat satellite image data over Australia since 1979, from instruments including the Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). This data represents raw telemetry which has either been received directly at Geoscience Australia's (GAs) receiving stations (Alice Springs or - formerly - Hobart), or downloaded from the United States Geological Survey Organisation. The data is maintained in raw telemetry format as a baseline to downstream processes. While this data has been used extensively for numerous land and coastal mapping studies, its utility for accurate monitoring of environmental resources has been limited by the processing methods that have been traditionally used to correct for inherent geometric and radiometric distortions in EO imagery. To improve access to Australia's archive of Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI data, several collaborative projects have been undertaken in conjunction with industry, government and academic partners. These projects have enabled implementation of a more integrated approach to image data correction that incorporates normalising models to account for atmospheric effects, BRDF (Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function) and topographic shading (Li et al., 2012). The approach has been applied to Landsat TM/ETM+ and OLI imagery to create the surface reflectance products. <b>Value: </b>The Landsat Raw Data Archive is processed and further calibrated to input to development of information products toward an improved understanding of the distribution and status of environmental phenomena. <b>Scope: </b>Data is provided via the US Geological Survey's (USGS) Landsat program, following downlink and recording of the data at Alice Springs Antenna (operated by Geoscience Australia) or downloaded directly from USGS EROS
-
This collection includes calibrated time-series data and other products from Geoscience Australia's geomagnetic observatory network in Australia and Antarctica. Data dates back to 1924. <b>Value: </b>These data are used in mathematical models of the geomagnetic field, in resource exploration and exploitation, to monitor space weather, and for scientific research. The resulting information can be used for compass-based navigation, magnetic direction finding, and to help protect communities by mitigating the potential hazards generated by magnetic storms. <b>Scope: </b>Continuous geomagnetic time series data, indices of magnetic activity and associated metadata, Data dates back to 1924.