Authors / CoAuthors
de Caritat, P. | Cooper, M.
Abstract
In late 2006, the Australian Government announced its Energy Security Initiative, allowing Geoscience Australia to initiate a major program of onshore and offshore activities. The ambitious National Geochemical Survey of Australia (NGSA) project was launched in January 2007 as part of this program because until then Australia lacked a complete geochemical data coverage. Such a dataset informs on the concentrations and distributions of chemical elements in the near-surface environment. This pre-competitive knowledge, used in combination with other datasets, can contribute to making exploration for energy and mineral resources more cost-effective and less risky by helping target more detailed activities. As a spin-off, the multi-element dataset can also have applications in the fields of natural resources management, land-use decision-making and geohealth, for instance. During precursor pilot projects carried out between 2003 and 2006 in the Riverina, Gawler and Thomson regions, various sampling media, grain-size fractions and analytical methods were tested. In particular, it emerged that catchment outlet sediments from either overbank or floodplain settings or from similar low-lying settings were an ideal sampling medium that could be found across Australia. These sediments are, by their very nature, well-mixed composites of contributions from the dominant rock and soil types found within a catchment. Further, being deposited during times of receding floods, they are typically fine-grained, a beneficial property that enhances the geochemical signal-to-noise ratio. The data from the pilot projects indicated that even surface catchment outlet sediments could reflect geochemical signatures from basement and mineralisation, even when covered by thick transported overburden. .../...
Product Type
nonGeographicDataset
eCat Id
69942
Contact for the resource
Custodian
Point of contact
Cnr Jerrabomberra Ave and Hindmarsh Dr GPO Box 378
Canberra
ACT
2601
Australia
Keywords
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- External PublicationAbstract
- ( Theme )
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- geochemistry
- ( Theme )
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- regolith
- ( Theme )
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- mineral exploration
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- AU
- Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)
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- Earth Sciences
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- Published_Internal
Publication Date
2010-01-01T00:00:00
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unknown
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geoscientificInformation
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Unknown
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Extents
[-44.0, -10.0, 112.0, 154.0]
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