The Layered Geology of Australia web map service is a seamless national coverage of Australia’s surface and subsurface geology. Geology concealed under younger cover units are mapped by effectively removing the overlying stratigraphy (Liu et al., 2015). This dataset is a layered product and comprises five chronostratigraphic time slices: Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic, Neoproterozoic, and Pre-Neoproterozoic. As an example, the Mesozoic time slice (or layer) shows Mesozoic age geology that would be present if all Cenozoic units were removed. The Pre-Neoproterozoic time slice shows what would be visible if all Neoproterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic units were removed. The Cenozoic time slice layer for the national dataset was extracted from Raymond et al., 2012. Surface Geology of Australia, 1:1 000 000 scale, 2012 edition. Geoscience Australia, Canberra.

This web service delivers metadata for onshore active and passive seismic surveys conducted across the Australian continent by Geoscience Australia and its collaborative partners. For active seismic this metadata includes survey header data, line location and positional information, and the energy source type and parameters used to acquire the seismic line data. For passive seismic this metadata includes information about station name and location, start and end dates, operators and instruments. The metadata are maintained in Geoscience Australia's onshore active seismic and passive seismic database, which is being added to as new surveys are undertaken. Links to datasets, reports and other publications for the seismic surveys are provided in the metadata.

To unlock the potential of one of the largest underexplored onshore areas in Australia, the Exploring for the Future Officer-Musgrave project is delivering a wide array of publicly available new analyses and data. The collection of new AEM data, as well as the reprocessing of existing industry acquired AEM data is expected to improve the understanding of groundwater systems in the Officer-Musgrave region. New regional scale data acquisition and analysis, including stratigraphic, petrophysical and geomechanical studies from existing wells, focus on advancing understanding of petroleum systems elements and assist the exploration and evaluation of conventional and unconventional petroleum resources. Here we provide an overview of available new datasets and insights into the stratigraphy of the Officer Basin. Further analysis is underway including well log digitisation, fluid inclusion analysis and a petrographic report on Officer Basin wells. This work is expected to further improve geological knowledge and reduce the energy exploration risk of the Officer Basin, a key focus of this program. <b>Citation: </b>Carr L. K., Henson P., Wang L., Bailey A., Fomin T., Boreham C., Edwards D., Southby C., Symington N., Smith M., Halas L. & Jones T, 2022. Exploring for the Future in the Officer Musgrave region. In: Czarnota, K. (ed.) Exploring for the Future: Extended Abstracts, Geoscience Australia, Canberra, https://dx.doi.org/10.26186/146988

July 2020: The data in this product has been superseded, with the new dataset available here: <a href="https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/133388">https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/133388</a> However, the report in this product still presents valuable insights e.g., into the relationship between copper in the regolith and groundwater. The mineral resources of Tennant Creek and Mt Isa have contributed tremendously to the economic development the Northern Territory and Queensland. Vast areas of poorly known mineral potential remain under explored between and around these two mining centres, with prospective solid geology covered by a relatively thin layer of transported sediments. Hydrogeochemical surveys utilise groundwater as a passive sampling medium to reveal the chemistry of the underlying geology including hidden mineralisation. These surveys also provide regional baseline groundwater datasets that can inform environmental monitoring and decision making.

The magnetotelluric (MT) method is increasingly being applied to mineral exploration under cover with several case studies showing that mineral systems can be imaged from the lower crust to the near surface. Driven by this success, the Australian Lithospheric Architecture Magnetotelluric Project (AusLAMP) is delivering long-period data on a 0.5° grid across Australia, and derived continental scale resistivity models that are helping to drive investment in mineral exploration in frontier areas. Part of this investment includes higher-resolution broadband MT surveys to enhance resolution of features of interest and improve targeting. To help gain best value for this investment it is important to have an understanding of the ability and limitations of MT to resolve features on different scales. Here we present synthetic modelling of conductive, narrow, near-vertical faults 500 m to 1500 m wide, and show that a station spacing of around 14 km across strike is sufficient to resolve these into the upper crust. However, the vertical extent of these features is not well constrained, with near-vertical planar features commonly resolved as two separate features. This highlights the need for careful interpretation of anomalies in MT inversion. In particular, in an exploration scenario, it is important to consider that a lack of interconnectivity between a lower crustal/upper mantle conductor and conductors higher up in the crust and the surface might be apparent only, and may not reflect reduced mineral prospectivity. Appeared in Exploration Geophysics Journal 05 Dec 2022

Geoscience Australia has compiled U-Pb datasets from disparate sources into a single, standardised and publicly-available U–Pb geochronology compilation for all Australia. The national maps presented in this poster expand upon the data coverage previously compiled by Anderson et al. (2017) and Jones et al. (2018), which covered northern and western Australia only. This extension of a national coverage has been achieved through the development of Geoscience Australia’s Interpreted Ages database. In this database, there are now >4000 U–Pb sample points compiled from across Australia, with significant datasets to come from the southern Australia regions. These will be available to the public in the coming months through the Exploring for the Future Data Discovery Portal (eftf.ga.gov.au).

Exploring for the Future Roadshow- Regional petroleum systems visualised in the EFTF Data Discovery Portal. A summary of petroleum systems of the Canning Basin and regional Meso- and Paleoproterozoic basins of northern Australia, and an introduction to the EFTF Data Discovery Portal

The focus of this project is to use data from space gravity missions to track changes in total water storage in northern Australia and to investigate the viability of this approach for monitoring Australia’s water resources. The specific objective of the project is to “develop time series of changes in total water storage across northern Australia to provide insights into changes in water resources.” Data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission was analysed for the period January 2003 to August 2016 and monthly estimates of changes (relative to a mean gravity field value in 2008) were developed. The analysis was done using the ANU GRACE software, which has been developed specifically to enable estimates to be tailored to the pattern and shape of Australian drainage basins. Estimates in irregularly shaped regions of approximately 90,000 km2 have been provided, along with visualisation tools to enable time series of total water storage changes to be made. This package contains: 1) Final report provided to Geoscience Australia by ANU 2) GRACE total water storage change dataset The dataset includes the original data provided by ANU as well as images/video derived from the data to help with visualisation. a) ANU_iter2_australia.nc: the total water storage changes estimate from GRACE satellite gravity mission measurements b) BOM-final.nc, GLDAS-CLSM-final.nc, GLDAS-NOAH-final-nc: the canopy, snow and soil water storage changes estimate from hydrological models c) mascons_stage5_V004_australia: the mascon file describing the geometry of the mascon grid over australia d) plot_ewh_time_series.py, plot_soil_moisture_time_series.py and plot_gw_time_series.py: python scripts allowing to plot time series of total water storage, canopy, snow or soil water storage and groundwater storage for any latitude, longitude in Australia e) map_mascons_australia.py and map_ewh_australia.py: python scripts to create maps of the mascon geometry and ewh anomaly f) monthly images of the total water storage and videos depicting changes for each month over the years (2003-2016) and video with all months stitched together. Geoscience Australia commissioned the work as part of the Exploring for the Future (EFTF)—an eight year, $225 million Australian Government funded geoscience data and information acquisition program focused on better understanding the potential mineral, energy and groundwater resources across Australia.

Presentation for the Exploring for the Future Roadshow presentation about the Kidson Sub-basin seismic survey, Waukarlycarly-1 stratigraphic well, in addition to the Centralian Super Basin well correlation study.

This report presents the results of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and mercury porosimetry analyses on 1 whole core sample from the GSWA Waukarlycarly 1 stratigraphic well drilled in the Canning Basin. The well was drilled as part of a co-funded collaboration between Geoscience Australia (GA) and the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) aimed at gathering new subsurface data on the potential mineral, energy and groundwater resources in the southern Canning Basin. The collaboration resulted in the acquisition of the Kidson Deep Crustal Seismic Reflection Survey in 2018; and the drilling of deep stratigraphic well GSWA Waukarlycarly 1, located along the Kidson Sub-basin seismic line within the Waukarlycarly Embayment in 2019 (Figure 1). GSWA Waukarlycarly 1 reached a total depth of 2680.53 m at the end of November 2019 and was continuously cored through the entire Canning Basin stratigraphy. Coring was complemented by the acquisition of a standard suite of wireline logs and a vertical seismic profile. The work presented in this report constitutes part of the post well data acquisition. The purpose of the SEM analysis was to determine mineralogy and textural relationships between grains, verify the presence of organic material at the micro-scale, document i) the presence of diagenetic alterations to the detrital mineral assemblage and ii) eventual distribution of visible pores. Additionally, mercury injection capillary pressure porosimetry (MICP) was used to assess interconnected porosityand pore size distribution.