The Historical Bushfire Boundaries service represents the aggregation of jurisdictional supplied burnt areas polygons stemming from the early 1900's through to 2022 (excluding the Northern Territory). The burnt area data represents curated jurisdictional owned polygons of both bushfires and prescribed (planned) burns. To ensure the dataset adhered to the nationally approved and agreed data dictionary for fire history Geoscience Australia had to modify some of the attributes presented. The information provided within this service is reflective only of data supplied by participating authoritative agencies and may or may not represent all fire history within a state.

Geochemical surveys deliver fundamental data, information and knowledge about the concentration and spatial distribution of chemical elements, isotopes and compounds in the natural environment. Typically near-surface sampling media, such as soil, sediment, outcropping rocks and stream or groundwater, are used. The application of such datasets to fields such as mineral exploration, environmental management, and geomedicine has been widely documented. In this presentation I reflect on a sabbatical experience with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in 2017-2018 that allowed me to extend the interpretation of geochemical survey data beyond these established applications. In particular, with my collaborators we explore ways in which geochemical survey data and maps can be used to indicate the provenance of an evidentiary sample collected at a crime scene or obtained for instance from items belonging to a suspect intercepted at border entry. Because soils are extremely diverse mineralogically, geochemically and biologically, it should theoretically be possible to exclude very large swathes of territory (>90%) from further provenancing investigation using soil data. In a collaboration between Geoscience Australia (GA), the AFP and the University of Canberra (UC), a recent geochemical survey of the urban/suburban Canberra region in southeastern Australia is being used as a testbed for developing different approaches to forensic applications of geochemical surveys. A predictive soil provenancing method at the national scale was also developed and tested for application where no actual detailed, fit-for-purpose geochemical survey data exist. Over the next few years, GA, AFP and UC are collaborating with Flinders University to add biome data from soil and soil-derived dust to further improve the provenancing technique. This Abstract was presented at the 2021 Goldschmidt Conference (https://conf.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/2021/meetingapp.cgi)

We collected 38 groundwater and two surface water samples in the semi-arid Lake Woods region of the Northern Territory to better understand the hydrogeochemistry of this system, which straddles the Wiso, Tennant Creek and Georgina geological regions. Lake Woods is presently a losing waterbody feeding the underlying groundwater system. The main aquifers comprise mainly carbonate (limestone and dolostone), siliciclastic (sandstone and siltstone) and evaporitic units. The water composition was determined in terms of bulk properties (pH, electrical conductivity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, redox potential), 40 major, minor and trace elements as well as six isotopes (δ18Owater, δ2Hwater, δ13CDIC, δ34SSO4=, δ18OSO4=, 87Sr/86Sr). The groundwater is recharged through infiltration in the catchment from monsoonal rainfall (annual average rainfall ~600 mm) and runoff. It evolves geochemically mainly through evapotranspiration and water–mineral interaction (dissolution of carbonates, silicates, and to a lesser extent sulfates). The two surface waters (one from the main creek feeding the lake, the other from the lake itself) are extraordinarily enriched in 18O and 2H isotopes (δ18O of +10.9 and +16.4 ‰ VSMOW, and δ2H of +41 and +93 ‰ VSMOW, respectively), which is interpreted to reflect evaporation during the dry season (annual average evaporation ~3000 mm) under low humidity conditions (annual average relative humidity ~40 %). This interpretation is supported by modelling results. The potassium (K) relative enrichment (K/Cl mass ratio over 50 times that of sea water) is similar to that observed in salt-lake systems worldwide that are prospective for potash resources. Potassium enrichment is believed to derive partly from dust during atmospheric transport/deposition, but mostly from weathering of K-silicates in the aquifer materials (and possibly underlying formations). Further studies of Australian salt-lake systems are required to reach evidence-based conclusions on their mineral potential for potash, lithium, boron and other low-temperature mineral system commodities such as uranium. <b>Citation:</b> P. de Caritat, E. N. Bastrakov, S. Jaireth, P. M. English, J. D. A. Clarke, T. P. Mernagh, A. S. Wygralak, H. E. Dulfer & J. Trafford (2019) Groundwater geochemistry, hydrogeology and potash mineral potential of the Lake Woods region, Northern Territory, Australia, <i>Australian Journal of Earth Sciences</i>, 66:3, 411-430, DOI: 10.1080/08120099.2018.1543208

People, homes, businesses and infrastructure have been severely impacted by the recent flooding in Tweed Shire. Information is needed on the nature of these impacts to assess losses, assess community recovery and contribute to the development of strategies to reduce risk in the future. To collect this information a survey team has been established to gather data on the impact on buildings and businesses. The survey team is being led by Geoscience Australia, the national agency for geoscience research and spatial information, in collaboration with RMIT University and the Tweed Shire Council.

This Surat Basin dataset contains descriptive attribute information for the areas bounded by the relevant spatial groundwater feature in the associated Hydrogeology Index map. Descriptive topics are grouped into the following themes: Location and administration; Demographics; Physical geography; Surface water; Geology; Hydrogeology; Groundwater; Groundwater management and use; Environment; Land use and industry types; and Scientific stimulus. The Surat Basin is a sedimentary basin with approximately 2500 m of clastic fluvial, estuarine, coastal plain, and shallow marine sedimentary rocks, including sandstone, siltstone, mudstone, and coal. Deposition occurred over six cycles from the Early Jurassic to the Cretaceous, influenced by eustatic sea-level changes. Each cycle lasted 10 to 20 million years, ending around the mid-Cretaceous. Bounded by the Auburn Arch to the northeast and the New England Orogen to the southeast, it connects to the Clarence-Moreton Basin through the Kumbarilla Ridge. The Central Fold Belt forms its southern edge, while Cenozoic uplift caused erosion in the north. The basin's architecture is influenced by pre-existing faults and folds in the underlying Bowen Basin and the nature of the basement rocks from underlying orogenic complexes. Notable features include the north-trending Mimosa Syncline and Boomi Trough, overlying the deeper Taroom Trough of the Bowen Basin and extending southwards. The Surat Basin overlies older Permian to Triassic sedimentary basins like the Bowen and Gunnedah Basins, unconformably resting on various older basement rock terranes, such as the Lachlan Orogen, New England Orogen, and Thomson Orogen. Several Palaeozoic basement highs mark its boundaries, including the Eulo-Nebine Ridge in the west and the Kumbarilla Ridge in the east. Paleogene to Neogene sediments, like those from the Glendower Formation, cover parts of the Surat Basin. Remnant pediments and Cenozoic palaeovalleys incised into the basin have added complexity to its geological history and may influence aquifer connections. Overall, the Surat Basin's geological history is characterized by millions of years of sedimentation, tectonic activity, and erosion, contributing to its geological diversity and economic significance as a source of natural resources, including coal and natural gas.

Publicly available baseline ecology data are compiled to provide a common information base for environment, resource development and regulatory decisions in the Galilee Basin region. This data guide captures existing knowledge of the ecosystems and environmental assets overlying the Galilee Basin. The land overlying the Galilee Basin is dominated by the Mitchell Grass Downs Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) bioregion and contains nearly the entire Desert Uplands bioregion. There are also smaller areas of Mulga, Brigalow Belt bioregions, Channel Country, Gulf Plains and Einasleigh Uplands bioregions. The data on the ecosystems and environmental assets overlying the Galilee Basin have been summarised in July 2021 to inform decisions on resource development activities. Key data sources are broad vegetation groups - pre-clearing and 2019 remnant - Queensland series (Queensland Government), Field Environmental Data, Australian Wetlands Database and Heritage places and lists (Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water), and the Atlas of Living Australia.

All commercially produced hydrogen worldwide is presently stored in salt caverns. The only known thick salt accumulations in eastern Australia are found in the Boree Salt of the Adavale Basin in central Queensland. The Boree Salt consists predominantly of halite and is considered to be suitable for hydrogen storage. In 2021, Geoscience Australia contracted Intrepid Geophysics to perform 3D geological modelling of the Adavale Basin, particularly interested in modelling the Boree Salt deposit in the region. The developed 3D model has identified three main salt bodies of substantial thicknesses (up to 555 m) that may be suitable for salt cavern construction and hydrogen storage. These are the only known salt bodies in eastern Australia and represent potentially strategic assets for underground hydrogen storage. However, there are still unknowns with further work and data acquisition required to fully assess the suitability of these salt bodies for hydrogen storage. Geoscience Australia has transformed Intrepid Geophysics' Adavale Basin 3D Modelling dataset into Petrel. This Petrel dataset is part of Geoscience Australia's Exploring for the Future program. Files including a readme file and Petrel dataset that consists of formation surfaces, faults, borehole information and formation tops. Disclaimer: Geoscience Australia has tried to make the information in this product as accurate as possible. However, it does not guarantee that the information is totally accurate or complete. Therefore, you should not solely rely on this information when making a commercial decision. This dataset is published with the permission of the CEO, Geoscience Australia.

Publicly available data was compiled to provide a common information base for resource development, environmental and regulatory decisions in the Adavale Basin. This data guide gives an example of how these data can be used to create the components of a workflow to identify unconventional hydrocarbon resource opportunities. The data guide is designed to support the data package that provide insights on unconventional hydrocarbon resources in the Adavale Basin. The unconventional hydrocarbon assessment for the Adavale Basin includes tight gas, shale resources (shale oil and gas) and coal seam gas for 8 geological intervals, termed plays – these intervals have been defined by Wainman et al. (2023). The assessment captures data from well completion reports and government data sources (e.g. Queensland Petroleum Exploration Database (QPED) from the Geological Survey of Queensland (GSQ) Open Data Portal) along with the scientific literature to inform the components required for unconventional hydrocarbons to be present. Thirty-nine boreholes in the Adavale Basin were assessed with data used to map out gross depositional environments and their geological properties relevant for unconventional hydrocarbon assessments. The data are compiled at a point in time to inform decisions on resource development activities. The guide outlines the play-based workflow for assessing unconventional hydrocarbon resource prospectivity. Each of the elements required for a prospective unconventional hydrocarbon system is explained and mapped. These data were merged and spatially multiplied to show the relative assessment of unconventional hydrocarbon prospectivity across the basin, at both play interval and basin scale. As an example of assessments contained within the data package, this data guide showcases the tight gas prospectivity of the Buckabie Play interval.

Compositional data from a soil survey over north Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, are used to develop and test an empirical soil provenancing method. Mineralogical data from Fourier Transform InfraRed spectroscopy (FTIR) and Magnetic Susceptibility (MS), and geochemical data from X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF; for total major oxides) and Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS; for both total and aqua regia-soluble trace elements), are performed on the survey’s 268 topsoil samples (0-5 cm depth; 1 sample per km2). Principal components (PCs) are calculated after imputation of censored data and centred logratio transformation. The sequential provenancing approach is underpinned by (i) the preparation of interpolated raster grids of the soil properties (including PCs); (ii) the explicit quantification and propagation of uncertainty; (iii) the intersection of the soil property rasters with the values of the evidentiary sample (± uncertainty); and (iv) the computation of cumulative provenance rasters (‘heat maps’) for the various analytical techniques. The sequential provenancing method is tested in the north Canberra soil survey with three ‘blind’ samples representing simulated evidentiary samples. Performance metrics of precision and accuracy indicate that the FTIR and MS (mineralogy), as well as XRF and total ICP-MS (geochemistry) analytical methods offer the most precise and accurate provenance predictions. Inclusions of PCs in provenancing adds marginally to the performance. Maximising the number of analytes/analytical techniques is advantageous in soil provenancing. Despite acknowledged limitations and gaps, it is concluded that the empirical soil provenancing approach can play an important role in forensic and intelligence applications. <b>Citation:</b> de Caritat, P., Woods, B., Simpson, T., Nichols, C., Hoogenboom, L., Ilheo, A., Aberle, M.G. and Hoogewerff, J. (2021), Forensic soil provenancing in an urban/suburban setting: A sequential multivariate approach. <i>J Forensic Sci</i>, 66: 1679-1696. https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.14727

This Bowen Basin dataset contains descriptive attribute information for the areas bounded by the relevant spatial groundwater feature in the associated Hydrogeology Index map. Descriptive topics are grouped into the following themes: Location and administration; Demographics; Physical geography; Surface water; Geology; Hydrogeology; Groundwater; Groundwater management and use; Environment; Land use and industry types; and Scientific stimulus. The Bowen Basin is part of the Sydney–Gunnedah–Bowen basin system and contains up to 10,000 m of continental and shallow marine sedimentary rocks, including substantial deposits of black coal. The basin's evolution has been influenced by tectonic processes initiated by the New England Orogen, commencing with a phase of mechanical extension, and later evolving to a back-arc setting associated with a convergent plate margin. Three main phases of basin development have been identified; 1) Early Permian: Characterized by mechanical extension, half-graben development, thick volcanic units and fluvio-lacustrine sediments and coal deposits. 2) Mid Permian: A thermal relaxation event led to the deposition of marine and fluvio-deltaic sediments, ending with a regional unconformity. 3) Late Permian and Triassic: Foreland loading created a foreland basin setting with various depositional environments and sediment types, including included fluvial, marginal marine, deltaic and marine sediments along with some coal deposits in the late Permian, and fluvial and lacustrine sediments in the Triassic. Late Permian peat swamps led to the formation of extensive coal seams dominating the Blackwater Group. In the Triassic, fluvial and lacustrine deposition associated with foreland loading formed the Rewan Formation, Clematis Sandstone Group, and Moolayember Formation. The basin is a significant coal-bearing region with over 100 hydrocarbon accumulations, of which about one third are producing fields. The Surat Basin overlies the southern Bowen Basin and contains varied sedimentary assemblages hosting regional-scale aquifer systems. Cenozoic cover to the Bowen Basin includes a variety of sedimentary and volcanic rock units. Palaeogene and Neogene sediments mainly form discontinuous units across the basin. Three of these units are associated with small eponymous Cenozoic basins (the Duaringa, Emerald and Biloela basins). Unnamed sedimentary cover includes Quaternary alluvium, colluvium, lacustrine and estuarine deposits; Palaeogene-Neogene alluvium, sand plains, and duricrusts. There are also various Cenozoic intraplate volcanics across the Bowen Basin, including central volcanic- and lava-field provinces.