We are all the beneficiaries of glass - from the vessels that hold our drinks, fiber optics that carry our communications, and the solar panels that convert the sun’s energy into electricity, contributing to a greener future, to name a few. But did you know glass can also be made in nature? Dramatic natural events like lightning strikes, volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts can all produce glass. We find beautiful evidence of this here on Earth…and also on the Moon! The value of glass has been recognized with the United Nations declaring 2022 to be the International Year of Glass. Subsequently the school student theme for Australia’s National Science Week follows suit. Join Geoscience Australia, the ACT Education Directorate and the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences to explore forms of natural glass.

For National Reconciliation Week, Geoscience Australia staff will present the progress of the organisation's first Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan as well as examples of engagement and collaboration with First Nations Australians.

In geoscience we often use ‘quality’ to describe our activities and products, but what does ‘quality’ actually look like? How do we measure it and determine if something is the ‘quality’ facility or ‘quality’ data we say it is? This is not simply an esoteric thought experiment – it matters: end-users and stakeholders are already making decisions potentially affecting whole communities and worth millions of dollars based on their understanding of the quality of our geochemical analytical data. These products are the foundation of Geoscience Australia’s reputation as a trusted advisor to government, communities and industry. This talk will guide you through the Geoscience Australia Laboratory, paying particular focus to our role in quality control and assurance for a range of analytical data products, including our core analytical capabilities in Organic Geochemistry, Microanalysis and Physical Properties. You will hear how the labs are evolving as we build new facilities and build on our capabilities. You will learn more about the importance of quality, how it is defined and some tools to apply in your own work.

Satellite navigation is an important capability in our modern lives—we use it to find the nearest petrol station, order food at home, and track an arriving package. Accurate satellite-enabled positioning and timing technology is also becoming vital in many industrial sectors of the economy, including transport, agriculture, resources, and utilities. On behalf of the Australian government and in partnership with New Zealand, Geoscience Australia is improving satellite navigation capability for everyone with the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network, or SouthPAN. SouthPAN is a Satellite-Based Augmentation System that will use new spacecraft, ground sensors, and other infrastructure to broadcast corrections that complement existing Global Navigation Satellite Systems—like GPS, for example. SouthPAN services will commence in 2022 and be progressively improved in the coming years, ultimately being used in their most critical application: by aircraft to land at airports.

Compilation of age and endowment data on volcanic-hosted massive sulfide (VHMS), porphyry copper, orthomagmatic nickel, orogenic gold, granite-related rare metal and pegmatite deposits (nearly 1200 deposits from 21 mineral provinces) indicate that metallogenic patterns change over time. For much of Earth’s history, the metallogenesis of convergent margins is marked by a relatively systematic temporal progression of deposits, the convergent margin metallogenic cycle (CMMC): VHMS, calc-alkalic porphyry copper and orthomagmatic nickel → orogenic gold → alkalic porphyry copper, granite-related rare metal and pegmatite. Typically CMMCs last 70-170 Myr, and the progression appears to be related to the convergent margin tectonic cycle (Collins and Richards, 2008). Prior to ~3100 Ma, however, CMMCs are not recognised. Rather, these old mineral provinces are characterised by long metallogenic histories (400-500 Myr) with an irregular distribution of deposits. The Mesoarchean to Mesoproterozoic is characterised mostly by mineral provinces with short (80-150 Myr) metallogenic histories and a single CMMC. Between 1900 Ma and 1800 Ma, however, some mineral provinces (e.g. Trans-Hudson and Sveccofennian) are characterised by multiple CMMCs, with total metallogenic histories that last up to 200 Myr. Paleoproterozoic provinces with multiple CMMCs formed by the consumption of internal seas, whereas mineral provinces on outward-facing convergent margin typically have only one CMMC. After ~800 Ma, convergent margins are mostly long-lived (290-480 Myr) and are characterised by multiple CMMCs with complex metallogenic histories. The changes in the metallogenesis of convergent margins reflect changes in tectonic processes through time. Prior to 3100 Ma, stagnant lid tectonics, which did not involve subduction, resulted in the formation of oceanic plateaus with irregular periods of mineralisation. After the initiation of subduction at ~3100 Ma, the style of metallogenesis changed. The dominance of provinces with a single CMMC from 3100 to 800 Ma suggests that convergent margins were unstable and could be shut down easily. This is consistent with models of shallow-break-off subduction whereby the subducting slab breaks off at shallow levels due to the lower plate strength in the Archean and the early part of the Proterozoic. When the slab breaks off, the subduction system shuts down and produces a single CMMC. Only in cases where factors such as closure of internal seas force continued subduction do multiple CMMCs occur. The change to longer metallogenic histories and multiple CMMCs at ~800 Ma is likely the consequence of the cooling of the mantle, which increases plate strength, allowing subduction of cold slabs deeper into the mantle and more stable convergence: continuous ridge push and the density of oceanic crust causes re-initiated of subduction further outboard rather than complete termination of subduction when the convergent margin is perturbed by the accretion of an exotic block or other tectonic event. Subduction only terminates upon collision of two major crustal blocks. As a consequence, the metallogenic history or geological young convergent margins is long with multiple CMMIs and/or complex temporal interleaving of deposit types.

As the world’s largest archipelagic country in Earth’s most active tectonic region, Indonesia faces a substantial earthquake and tsunami threat. Understanding this threat is a challenge because of the complex tectonic environment, the paucity of observed data and the limited historical record. Here we combine information from recent studies of the geology of Indonesia’s Banda Sea with Global Positioning System observations of crustal motion and an analysis of historical large earthquakes and tsunamis there. We show that past destructive earthquakes were not caused by the supposed megathrust of the Banda outer arc as previously thought but are due to a vast submarine normal fault system recently discovered along the Banda inner arc. Instead of being generated by coseismic seafloor displacement, we find the tsunamis were more likely caused by earthquake-triggered submarine slumping along the fault’s massive scarp, the Weber Deep. This would make the Banda detachment representative not only as a modern analogue for terranes hyper-extended by slab rollback but also for the generation of earthquakes and tsunamis by a submarine extensional fault system. Our findings suggest that low-angle normal faults in the Banda Sea generate large earthquakes, which in turn can generate tsunamis due to earthquake-triggered slumping.

Title: Earth observations for water resources management - Crawford Fund Derek Tribe Address Overview: During the Derek Tribe Address, Dr Lisa-Maria Rebelo will discuss the critical role which new applications and tools, based on earth observation data and ICT technologies, have to play in transforming agricultural systems and ensuring the sustainable management of natural resources under current and future climate conditions. The address will highlight from many examples in Africa and Asia how these tools are currently being used to inform policy and investment decisions. This suite of data tools and databases for improved land and water management, have typically used innovative approaches to address data gaps and provide critically needed information to assess water availability and use. These developments have kept apace and harnessed rapidly developing advances in satellite and other sources of imagery as well as data modeling and analytical techniques. Applicable at global to regional scales, these data tools have included an earth observation-based approach to understanding just how much water is available and where/how this is being used on an operational basis in data scarce areas. This information is invaluable to water and agriculture planners and decision-makers, as they grapple with decreasing water availability and the growing impacts of climate change which is undermining the historical records they have relied on to date, to support their work. In recent advances, climate change scenarios have been used to develop an understanding of future trajectories of water accounts in a river basin and helps to answer the critical question of “Will there be water?” In many agricultural and natural resources management arenas, lack of data is cited as the major impediment to effective and realistic decision-making. Lisa’s drive to innovate approaches to filling that data gap has led to evidence-based informed strategic policy developments and day-to-day management of critical water resources across sectors in many African and Asian countries. Background: Dr Lisa-Maria Rebelo has been awarded the Derek Tribe Award for 2022 by the Crawford Fund. She has been recognized for her work across the African continent, and in South and Southeast Asia, in water productivity, remote sensing, natural resource management, wetland monitoring and assessment, basin water accounting, water productivity. The Derek Tribe Award was inaugurated in 2001 to mark the outstanding contributions of Emeritus Professor Derek Tribe AO OBE FTSE, Foundation Director of the Crawford Fund, to the promotion of international agricultural research. The Derek Tribe Award is made biennially to a citizen of a developing country in recognition of their distinguished contributions to the application of research in agriculture or natural resource management in a developing country or countries. The Crawford Fund is pleased to partner with Geosciences Australia to support Lisa-Maria to visit Australia to share her experiences and to deliver the 2022 Derek Tribe Address. Title: Digital Earth Africa: empowering African led solutions for climate action with Australian innovation - Geoscience Australia Distinguished Lecture Award Overview: Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) is a flagship investment for the Australian aid program in Africa, deploying world-class Australian innovation at unprecedented scales to deliver development outcomes across the African continent. Since 2019, DE Africa has been delivered through successful African - Australian partnerships, with Australian innovation supporting African leadership to support sustainable development, as well as build resilience and adapt to climate change. By providing access to freely available, decision ready earth observation information, Digital Earth Africa is now supporting a diverse range of governments, communities and industry partners to make more informed decisions on topics of national significance, such as supporting community-led climate action through mangrove conservation in Tanzania, high-level government decision-making on unregulated mining in Ghana and giraffe conservation in Kenya. The new DE Africa Coastline monitoring tool enables users to analyse coastal erosion and growth trends on an annual basis, and is now being used by partners in Senegal to support climate adaptation and mitigation efforts. Leveraging innovation from DE Australia, DE Africa Coastlines exemplifies how global to regional scale earth observation-based tools can successfully empower locally led decision making. Other continent wide, earth observation based services available through DE Africa, include Water Observations from Space, a provisional Crop Extent map and Vegetation Fractional cover. These innovative tools have immense potential to fill key data gaps needed to improve assessments of water use and availability and to support agricultural and natural resources management across the African continent. Background: Cedric will be presenting this talk on behalf of the Digital Earth Africa establishment team as part of Geoscience Australia’s Distinguished Geoscience Australia Lecture series

Australia has a vast and highly dynamic coastline of over 30,000 kilometres with many unique environments: sandy beaches, rocky cliffs, muddy tidal flats, and mangroves. Until recently, this scale and complexity has meant that many of Australia's coastal environments have been poorly and inconsistently mapped, particularly in dynamic or remote regions where accurate survey data can be extremely challenging and costly to obtain. In recent years, however, satellites orbiting our planet have provided a new and powerful source of information about Australia's coast and how it has changed over recent decades. Digital Earth Australia is a government platform that prepares these vast volumes of satellite data and makes it available to governments and industry for easy use. This talk will showcase how new and innovative analysis techniques can be applied to petabytes of DEA satellite data to better understand and monitor Australia's vast coastal zone from space: from using the rise and fall of the tide to map the 3D shape of Australia's coast, to track how our coastline has shifted and changed over the past three decades in unprecedented scale and detail. We will demonstrate how these freely available coastal products and tools developed by Digital Earth Australia can be used by scientists, managers, policymakers and the general public to provide new information to help maintain and protect Australia's iconic shores for future generations.

Rapid population growth and an increasing demand for water has been depleting groundwater resources in the Central Valley of California for decades. The lack of sufficient ground monitoring networks poses serious challenges to water management efforts and puts the sustainability of groundwater resources at risk. This seminar will demonstrate how the satellite remote sensing techniques of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) can be applied to monitor groundwater resources and aquifer response to drought. The final part of this seminar will describe how GA is currently trialling the demonstrated methods as remote groundwater monitoring tools in the Great Artesian Basin of Australia.

The presentation will introduce the basic components of the drone/UAV/RPAs, summarise the rules for operating a drone as part of a business or undertaking (including operating under a Remotely Piloted Aircraft Operators Certificate – ReOC) and present some of the science and scientists utilising RPAs for their work at Geoscience Australia and beyond. The talks will include environmental research in Antarctica, landscape analysis after large earthquakes, machine learning to spot dangerous sharks and validating satellite reflectance, all with the assistance of drones.