This keynote address was presented at the Australian Nickel Conference held in Perth, 13-14 October 2004. Nickel-sulphide deposits in Australia are mainly associated with Archaean komatiites and Archaean Proterozoic mafic intrusions, but some unusual Phanerozoic deposits occur in eastern Australia. The majority of Australia's nickel production (~80%) is derived from komatiite deposits in the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia. The Eastern Goldfields Province of this craton hosts one of the greatest concentrations of Archaean komatiite-hosted nickel deposits in the world, several of which are world class (>1 Mt Ni). Exploration activities in Australia are currently focussed on mafic-ultramafic rocks in Late Archaean and Proterozoic provinces. Exploration has been stimulated by the discovery of new deposits (Flying Fox, Daybreak, Armstrong, Daltons, McEwen, Nebo-Babel), recognition of different styles of mineralisation (Avebury), and the protracted period of elevated nickel metal prices. There is considerable potential for finding new deposits associated with komatiites and mafic intrusions, particularly under shallow cover. Geoscience Australia has undertaken new research initiatives that define favourable mineralising elements, exploration strategies, and new nickel metallogenic provinces.

All available processed seismic data and well completion reports relevat to the 2007 Acreage Release. Datasets available in Geofrrame, Kingdom and Landmark workstation formats.

Geoscience Australia is distributing Landsat MSS, TM and ETM+ data for 19 epochs or time frames ranging from 1972 to 2010 covering Australia. This data has been provided by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency formerly known as the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO). This data is only available through Geoscience Australia and not through the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Epoch formats Epochs are available as 1:1M tiles or as a Continental mosaic in the following formats: Tiles Epoch Projection Bands File Format All MGA94 All bands except Band 6 (thermal) ERS/BIL 2004, 2005 & 2006 Geographic All bands except Band 6 (thermal) ERS/BIL Pre 2004 Geographic Bands 543 for TM & ETM+ and all bands for MSS ERS/BIL 2002 MGA94 Panchromatic only ERS/BIL 2002 Geographic Panchromatic only ERS/BIL Continental mosaics Epoch Projection Bands File Format All Geographic 543/RGB bands for TM, ETM+ and MSS ECW 2002 Panchromatic Sharpened Geographic Bands 543 plus Panchromatic band ECW File sizes and media File sizes of the data are significant Epoch Minimum Date Maximum Date Tile data - ERS/BIL Continental mosaic - ECW Total size Gb - MGA Total size Gb - Geographic Total size Gb - Geographic 2006 4/11/2005 7/10/2006 162.1* 145.0* 4.6 2005 5/12/2004 9/10/2005 96.1 85.3 4.2 2004 1/09/2003 25/09/2004 96.1 85.3 4.6 2002 (No Pan) 9/11/2001 27/11/2002 96.1 43.4 4.6 2002 Pan 9/11/2001 27/11/2002 64.1 57.8 N/A 2002 Pan sharpened 9/11/2001 27/11/2002 N/A N/A 4.6 2000 (No Pan) 14/07/1999 21/09/2000 96.1 43.4 4.6 1998 20/05/1997 31/08/1998 96.1 43.4 3.9 1995 11/06/1994 29/08/1995 96.1 43.4 3.9 1992 1/01/1992 11/03/1993 96.1 43.4 3.9 1991 27/09/1990 9/07/1991 96.1 43.4 3.9 1989 1/07/1989 3/04/1990 112.1 43.4 4.0 1988 12/07/1987 7/09/1988 16.1 14.5 3.7 1985 18/06/1984 20/07/1985 16.1 14.5 3.6 1980 21/09/1979 24/01/1981 16.1 14.5 3.7 1977 25/02/1975 20/12/1978 16.1 14.5 2.7 1972 28/07/1972 29/10/1976 16.1 14.5 3.5 *Includes date and boundary (datebound) data. Sensor/Epoch Landsat TM and ETM+ SLC-Off: 2006; Landsat MSS: 1972, 1977, 1980, 1985, 1988; Landsat TM: 1989*, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2004 and 2005; and Landsat ETM+: 2000 and 2002. *Includes simulated MSS from Landsat TM (MGA projection only). Projection Either MGA94 OR Geographic. Bands All bands except thermal bands - MGA coordinates; All bands except thermal bands - Geographical coordinates, 2004, 2005 & 2006 epochs; 5,4,3 for TM & ETM+ and all bands for MSS - Geographical coordinates, Pre 2004 epochs only; Panchromatic band available separately only for 2002 epoch - MGA & Geographical coordinates. Processing Ortho-corrected, radiometrically corrected and mosaiced into tiles. All data is calibrated to a common geographic and spectral base (AGO year 2000 base). Note: Single scene boundaries can be quite obvious within a tile due mainly to the seasonal changes associated with different acquisition dates. Tiling system Tiles approximate 1:1 million map sheets covering Australia. Most tiles contain overlap beyond the quoted extents. Coverage View a detailed map of the 1972 to 2005 epoch extents. Download an ESRI shapefile of the date and boundary (datebound) of each Landsat scene used to produce the epochs from 1972 to 2005. The introduction of SLC-Off and bumper mode Landsat products for the 2006 epoch has meant that a new method has been required for creating datebound information. The new 2006 date bounds are currently in raster form as opposed to the traditional vector. The rasters are in ER Mapper Storage format (ERS) format as Geodetic or MGA projections - file size 61 or 66 Gb. Pixel size 25 metres TM and ETM+ and 50 metres MSS. Format Generic BIL files with ER Mapper ASCII header. File size Variable -11:45 AM 1/04/2010: This data is available under Creative Commons Licence 3.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/

These images are derived from the January 2002 edition of the "Magnetic Anomaly Grid of the Australian Region" (GEOCAT Record : 38820). That grid is the first integrated onshore/offshore magnetic anomaly grid for the complete Australian margin extending across 8S - 52S, 106E - 172E. The grid cell size is 0.01 degree (approx. 1 km). Earlier releases were restricted to portions of NW and SW Australia.

This gravity anomaly image has been generated from the Bouguer Gravity Anomaly Grid of Australia 2016. The Bouguer grid has been image enhanced and displayed as a hue-saturation-intensity (HSI) image with sun shading from the northeast. The product has been derived from observations stored in the Australian National Gravity Database (ANGD) as at February 2016 together with the 2013 New South Wales Riverina gravity survey. Out of the almost 1.8 million records in the ANGD approximately 1.4 million stations were used to generate this image. The image shows spherical cap Bouguer anomalies over onshore continental Australia. The data used in this image has been acquired by the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments, the mining and exploration industry, universities and research organisations from the 1940's to the present day. The spherical cap Bouguer anomalies in this image are the combination of Bullard A and B corrections to the Free Air anomaly values using a density of 2670 kg/m^3.

Geoscience Australia has completed the first phase of an areal map of Australia's coastal geomorphological units. Utilising pre-existing GIS datasets procured from local, state and federal government agencies, this national scale map conforms to a coastal geomorphology classification scheme developed at Geoscience Australia. Phase one consists of a geodatabase containing a series of state wide feature datasets that have been reclassified into the national coastal geomorphology classification scheme.

SPOTMaps are seamles, uniform, orthorectified territorial coverages produced with 2.5 metre colour imagery acquired by the SPOT 5 satellite. Spectral mode: Colour (3 bands) Location accuracy: 10 to 15 metres RMS, depending on the country Preprocessing level: Ortho (DEM used: Reference 3D or SRTM DTED-1 according to availability) Projection: UTM WGS 84 Format: GeoTiff

Australia magnetic anomaly pixel map

This data set contains information on Oil and Gas pipeline infrastructure. This dataset has been converted from Microstation format used in a map "Petroleum Exploration and Development Titles" published annually in APRIL. Attributes have been added to comply with data standards and minor coding of line work has been achieved using annotation from the map. Further data has been added, specifically for the specific Acreage Release Areas.

The first edition ACE - Australian Continental Elements dataset is a GIS representation of the lithosphere fabrics of the Australian plate, interpreted from linear features and associated discontinuities in the gravity anomaly map of continental Australia (Bacchin et al., 2008; Nakamura et al., 2011) and the global marine gravity dataset compiled from satellite altimetry (Sandwell & Smith, 2009). It should be used in context with these input data sources, at scales no more detailed than the nominal scale of 1:5 000 000.