Detailed field mapping between Cloncurry and Selwyn has established the existence of a common stratigraphic/tectonic history of almost all the geology east of the Overhang Shear Zone, a major suture separating the Cloncurry-Selwyn Zone from the Quamby-Malbon Belt and Mitakoodi Block. The major exception is a discrete tectonic belt in the far south of the region, the Gin Creek Block, which forms an anomalous zone of older stratigraphy and high grade metamorphism enveloped by tectonic boundaries with the surrounding units. The Cloncurry-Selwyn Zone itself could be subdivided into several sub-regions with similar internal characteristics, but for simplicity the key findings reveal that there are two principal supra-crustal packages folded and interleaved together along major faults and intruded by 1550-1510Ma granitic rocks.

3D visualisation of the Mount Isa Crustal Seismic Survey

The Capel and Faust basins are located in a frontier part of offshore eastern Australia, about 800 km east of Brisbane in 1300-2500 m of water. Little is known of the basin structures and geological history of this area, which is a continental fragment separated from Australia during the Cretaceous rifting of the Tasman Sea. In 2007 Geoscience Australia acquired 6000km of 2D seismic reflection and refraction data, gravity and magnetics, to begin an assessment of the petroleum prospectivity of these basins. A workflow has been developed to assist the seismic interpreter with feedback from a coherent 3D geology model that is used to predict the gravity response of the basins. This response is harmonized with the observed gravity and modified geological horizons are then returned to the seismic interpreter. An interface between Geoframe and Geomodeller has been optimized to make it very easy to do many iterations of this process, as suits the changing needs of the interpretation team.

The Sedimentary basins of eastern Australia project undertook structural and sequence stratigraphic mapping of a regional grid of seismic reflection data in the Bowen, Gunnedah and Surat Basins (usually 4 seconds two-way travel time data, with about 15,000 line km of data on about 1200 individual seismic lines). The seismic mapping was used to define the interplate and intraplate tectonic events that have helped to create the accommodation space and also to define the stratal geometry of the sedimentary units. Thus, the mapping provided the overall geometry of the basin system as well as the geometry of several of the sequence boundaries, resulting in the development of a new sequence stratigraphic framework for the basins. These results were also compiled into a series of structure contour and isopach maps, which have been used to build a 3D geological map of the Bowen Gunnedah and Surat Basins.

Joint seismic tomography exploiting P and S wave arrivals conducted before the 2011 Offshore Tohoku earthquake reveals an area comparable to the faulting surface for the 2011 March 11 event with different properties from other areas along the shallow part of the subduction zone. The differences are revealed by using a measure R of the relative variations in shear wavespeed and bulk-sound speed. Within the faulting area there are patches on the subduction zone with slightly reduced S wavespeed, and thus negative R, that appear to separate portions of the rupture with very different character. On the down-dip side there is strong short-period radiation, whilst the largest slip occurs up-dip with most energy release at longer periods. Segmentation of the slip process can be imaged by back projection of seismograms from the US Array; the areas of greatest energy release at short periods lie down-dip from the negative R anomalies. The main seismic moment release from broad-band seismograms lies on the updip side of the same anomalies. The structural variations on the subduction zone thus separate two regions with fundamental differences in the rupture process, stronger long-period radiation up-dip and stronger short-period radiation down-dip. These variations are likely to reflect features brought into the subduction zone, which may have acted as asperities that allowed this event to build up 30-40 m of strain in the near trench zone, making it much bigger than expected. Thus minor changes in the character of the subducted plate can have a significant influence on the behaviour of a great earthquake.

A geomechanical assessment of the Naylor Field, Otway Basin, Australia has been undertaken to investigate the possible geomechanical effects of CO2 injection and storage. The study aims to evaluate the geomechanical behaviour of the caprock/reservoir system and to estimate the risk of fault reactivation. The stress regime in the onshore Victorian Otway Basin is inferred to be strike-slip if the maximum horizontal stress is calculated using frictional limits and DITF (drilling induced tensile fracture) occurrence, or normal if maximum horizontal stress is based on analysis of dipole sonic log data. The NW-SE maximum horizontal stress orientation (142 degrees N) determined from a resistivity image log is broadly consistent with previous estimates and confirms a NW-SE maximum horizontal stress orientation for the Otway Basin. An analytical geomechanical solution is used to describe stress changes in the subsurface of the Naylor Field. The computed reservoir stress path for the Naylor Field is then incorporated into fault reactivation analysis to estimate the minimum pore pressure increase required to cause fault reactivation (Pp) The highest reactivation propensity (for critically-oriented faults) ranges from an estimated pore pressure increase (Pp) of 1MPa to 15.7MPa (estimated pore pressure of 18.5-233. MPa) depending on assumptions made about maximum horizontal stress magnitude, fault strength,reservoir stress path and Biot's coefficient. The critical pore pressure changes for known faults at Naylor Field range from an estimated pore pressure increase (Pp) of 2MPa to 17MPa (estimated pore pressure of 19.5-34.5 MPa).

Geoscience Australia has developed an interactive 3D viewer for three national datasets; the new Radiometric Map of Australia, the Magnetic Anomaly Map of Australia, and the Gravity Anomaly Map of the Australian Region. The interactive virtual globe is based on NASA's open source World Wind Java Software Development Kit (SDK) and provides users with easy and rich access to these three national datasets. Users can view eight different representations of the radiometric map and compare these with the magnetic and gravity anomaly maps and satellite imagery; all draped over a digital elevation model. The full dataset for the three map sets is approximately 55GB (in ER Mapper format), while the compressed full resolution images used in the virtual globe total only 1.6GB and only the data for the geographic region being viewed is downloaded to users computers. This paper addresses the processes for selecting the World Wind application over other solutions, how the data was prepared for online delivery, the development of the 3D Viewer using the Java SDK, issues involving connecting to online data sources, and discusses further development being undertaken by Geoscience Australia.

Australia's marine jurisdiction is one of the largest and most diverse in the world and surprisingly our knowledge of the biological diversity, marine ecosystems and the physical environment is limited. Acquiring and assembling high resolution seabed bathymetric data is a mandatory step in achieving the goal of increasing our knowledge of the marine environment because models of seabed morphology derived from these data provide useful insights into the physical processes acting on the seabed and the location of different types of habitats. Another important application of detailed bathymetric data is the modelling of hazards such tsunami and storms as they interact with the shelf and coast. Hydrodynamic equations used in tsunami modelling are insensitive to small changes in the earthquake source model, however, small changes in the bathymetry of the shelf and nearshore can have a dramatic effect on model outputs. Therefore, accurate detailed bathymetry data are essential. Geoscience Australia has created high resolution bathymetry grids (at 250, 100, 50 and 10 metres) for Christmas, Cocos (Keeling), Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands. An exhaustive search was conducted finding all available bathymetry such as multibeam swath, laser airborne depth sounder, conventional echo sounder, satellite derived bathymetry and naval charts. Much of this data has been sourced from Geoscience Australia's holdings as well as the CSIRO, the Australian Hydrographic Service and foreign institutions.Onshore data was sourced from Geoscience Australia and other Commonwealth institutions. The final product is a seamless combined Digital Bathymetric Model (DBM) and Digital Elevation Model (DEM).The new Geoscience Australia grids are a vast improvement on the existing publicly available grids.

3D visualisation of the Mount Isa Crustal Seismic Survey

Seismic line 07GA-A1, described here, forms part of the Isa-Georgetown-Charters Towers seismic survey that was acquired in 2007. The seismic line is oriented approximately northeast-southwest and extends from near Mt Surprise in the southwest to near Mareeba in the northeast (Figure 1). The acquisition costs for this line were provided by AuScope, which is an unincorporated company funded by the Australian Government under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Field logistics and processing were carried out by the Seismic Acquisition and Processing team from Geoscience Australia. Five discrete geological provinces have been interpreted on this seismic section. Only two of these occur at the surface, with outcrops of the Etheridge Province in the southwest and the Hodgkinson Province in the northeast. The Abingdon, Sausage Creek and Cape River Provinces have been interpreted to occur in the subsurface (Figure 2).