Australia as it exists today is a product of geological processes that have occurred over its 4.5 billion year history. Isotopic studies are one approach to understanding the history and evolution of the Australian continent. Isotope geochronology tells us about the timing of a wide range of geological processes like crystallisation, deformation and cooling of rocks. Isotope geochemistry informs on the precursor components from which the rocks formed, and can act as 'paleogeophysical' sensors to tell us more about the subsurface. The Isotopic Atlas of Australia brings together five of the most widely used isotopic systems in geology and delivers publicly available maps and datasets in a consistent format. This work is unlocking the collective value of decades of investment in data collection, and facilitating qualitative and quantitative comparison and integration with other datasets such as geophysical images. This talk will be an introduction to the world of isotopes as applied to understand geology, and an overview of the Isotopic Atlas recently produced as part of the Exploring for the Future Program.

This talk will discuss the current state of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Australia, and the role it plays for mitigating CO2 emissions. In the talk, work that has been done at Geoscience Australia over the past decade will be discussed. CCS work will also be a part of the future Exploring for the Future Program, which will also be highlighted in the talk.

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.

Finding new mineral deposits has never been an easy job. Increasing demand for a range of commodities, and depletion of existing deposits through mining, means that new frontiers need to be opened up for mineral exploration. These will largely be in regions where prospective basement rocks are concealed under cover. However, identification of these new frontiers is not a simple task, and exploration is challenging in areas where little is known about the geological context. This talk will outline how new datasets give us fresh eyes with which to view the mineral prospectivity of covered parts of Australia, and how integration of these data at a range of scales provides the framework in which to explore and discover new mineral provinces.

"History provides a limited picture of what can happen from tropical cyclones (TCs). Take the example of Port Hedland or Townsville, with limited numbers of close TC impacts, especially in recent decades, where many communities have gone through rapid growth. How could emergency services in these towns prepare adequately for a major TC strike with no recent experience? How do they know if they have sufficient resources? Will they need to call in resources from other regions or further afield? In this presentation, we will discuss two parts of this problem – developing plausible scenarios of TCs for use in exercises and then evaluating the impacts of a selection of these events to guide planning and response actions for emergency services. GA’s Tropical Cyclone Hazard Assessment (TCHA) provides the backbone of impact scenario modelling – a stochastic catalogue of 10,000 years of plausible TC events that users can delve into. We connect the scenarios to our extensive built environment data collection and the corresponding vulnerability modelling capability to deliver tangible information on the impacts that as-yet unseen events could deliver to communities around our northern coastline.

The AusAEM survey is the world's largest airborne electromagnetic (AEM) survey flown to date, extending across an area exceeding 3.5 million km2 over Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, New South Wales Victoria and South Australia. Airborne electromagnetics is a geophysical method at the forefront in addressing the challenge of exploration under cover. In collaboration with the state and territory geological surveys, Geoscience Australia has led a national initiative whose goal is to acquire AEM data at a nominal line spacing of 20 km across Australia. The interpreted AEM conductivity sections were inverted using Geoscience Australia's open source Layered Earth Inversion Sample-By-Sample Time Domain Electromagnetics (GALEISBSTDEM) inversion. Horizontal along-flight line resolution is 12.5 m, and the vertical resolution varies exponentially with depth. Inversion cell sizes increase from 4.0 m at the surface to ~55 m in the bottom cell of the conductivity sections, ~500 m below surface. Consequently, the ability to resolve fine detail varies with depth. Using this dataset, we interpret the depth to chronostratigraphic surfaces, assembled stratigraphic relationship information, and delineated structural and electrically conductive features. Our results improved understanding of upper-crustal geology, led to 3D mapping of palaeovalleys, prompted further investigation of electrical conductors and their relationship to structural features and mineralisation, and helped us continuously connect correlative outcropping units separated by up to hundreds of kilometres. Our interpretation is designed to improve targeting and outcomes for mineral, energy and groundwater exploration, and contributes to our understanding of the chronostratigraphic, structural and upper-crustal evolution of northern Australia. Almost 200,000 regional depth measurements have been collected, each attributed with detailed geological information, are an important step towards a national geological framework, and offer a regional context for more detailed, smaller-scale AEM surveys. The AusAEM programme delivers much more than just reliable depth-to-cover estimates and the location of paleochannels. It can reveal basin architecture and regionally map structures, making it a crucial layer of data for mineral, energy and groundwater and exploration. It has become an essential part of data-driven decision making for conservation and environmental management.

Perth Canyon is Australia's second largest submarine canyon, and its elongate and continental shelf-incising morphology contrasts with Australia's more prolific slope-confined canyons. The canyon's sinuous course extends for 120 km from the continental shelf break (~180 m depth, only 50 km offshore from Perth) to its fan at the foot of the continental slope (~4500 m). This seminar will describe the application of a new, internationally-collaborative mapping approach to capture the complexity of the canyon and to link its modern morphology to subsurface data and thereby reconstruct its geological evolution. Infilled incised valleys found in seismic data beneath the canyon headwall suggest that the canyon initially incised in the Late Cretaceous (around 70 million years ago), and subsequent incisions and canyon activity have since declined in scale. Repeat surveys of the canyon headwall following two relatively large earthquakes in 2018 reveal minimal instability of the seafloor and suggest that the canyon is now less active than in it has been in its geological past.

This seminar will give a preview of the Digital Atlas and also look at the challenges and expectations driving the evolving, complex and misunderstood location data landscape. It will also explore how key partners from across government are working together to navigate this landscape and pave the way for a location-enabled future for Australia. The ways we live, work and learn, are ever evolving, even more so following the challenges we have faced in recent years. The rapid growth of location-enabled technologies, and new and emerging data sources are driving increased demand for real-time location data and personalised data streaming. As a nation, we need a data infrastructure and the capability to connect, access and analyse the wealth of government data assets to empower data-driven, evidence-based decisions. The Australian Government recognise the importance of location-based data and technology as a critical input to decision-making and are investing in key national digital and data initiatives. The Digital Atlas of Australia is one of these initiatives being led by Geoscience Australia. The Digital Atlas will bring together, curate and connect trusted national datasets from across government into an interactive, secure, and easy-to-use online platform. It will enable anyone, anywhere to explore, analyse and visualise location-based data on geography, people, economy, and the environment. Governments, businesses and communities will be empowered to make data-driven, evidence-based decisions about planning, infrastructure and investment at the local, regional and national level.

From being a poorly understood qualitative mapping tool, airborne electromagnetic (AEM) geophysics has become a mainstay for rapidly imaging the top few hundred metres of buried earth for a variety of geoscientific and environmental purposes. In this talk, we will detail GA’s quest to provide high quality, quantitative interpretation of AEM sounding data. Beginning with a 20-year historical perspective, we will shed light on how persistent focus on AEM technology directly led to AusAEM, the world’s largest (ongoing) AEM survey. We will then discuss how continuing focus on AEM has led to the development of an open source framework written in the Julia language, for subsurface imaging AND uncertainty quantification. This codebase is useful for geophysical methods beyond AEM, such as magnetotellurics and magnetic resonance. Finally, we will dwell on some real life examples using the new codebase and will look to the future of AEM@GA and its untapped potential.

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