<div>NDI Carrara 1 is a deep stratigraphic drill hole completed in 2020 as part of the MinEx CRC National Drilling Initiative (NDI) in collaboration with Geoscience Australia and the Northern Territory Geological Survey. It is the first stratigraphic test of the Carrara Sub-basin, a depocentre newly discovered in the South Nicholson region based on interpretation from seismic surveys (L210 in 2017 and L212 in 2019) acquired as part of the Exploring for the Future program. The drill hole intersected approximately 1120 m of Proterozoic sedimentary rocks unconformably overlain by 630 m of Georgina Basin carbonates.&nbsp;</div><div>Geoscience Australia has undertaken a range of investigations on the lithology, stratigraphy and geotechnical properties of NDI Carrara 1 as well as undertaking a range of analyses of about 500 physical samples recovered through the entire core. Analyses included geochronology, isotope studies, mineralogy, inorganic and organic geochemistry, petrophysics, geomechanics, thermal maturity and petroleum systems investigations.</div><div>Rock-Eval pyrolysis raw data undertaken by Geoscience Australia were reported in Butcher et al. (2021) on selected rock samples to establish their total organic carbon content, hydrocarbon-generating potential and thermal maturity. Interpretation of the Rock-Eval pyrolysis data concluded that a large portion of rocks within the Proterozoic section displayed unreliable Tmax values due to poorly defined S2 peaks resulting from high thermal maturity and low hydrogen content. In order to obtain more reliable Tmax values, Rock-Eval pyrolysis of selected isolated kerogens, where organic matter is concentrated and mineral matrix effects are removed, were conducted and the resulting data are presented in this report.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div>

<p>In the South Nicholson region of Queensland and the Northern Territory, the Paleoproterozoic Isa Superbasin and the Mesoproterozoic South Nicholson Basin have the potential to host both conventional and unconventional petroleum systems (Gorton & Troup, 2018). The region remains poorly explored however with only 19 petroleum wells drilled in total (Carr et al., 2016). Although nine stratigraphic intervals are described as potential source rocks, data coverage is extremely limited and a large proportion of the available data is old and of poor quality. To more comprehensively characterise these organic rich source rocks, higher resolution coverages of pre-competitive geochemical data is required (Jarrett et al. 2018). <p>This report contains the total organic carbon (TOC) content and Rock-Eval pyrolysis data of 674 samples selected from twelve drill cores housed in the Geological Survey of Queensland’s Brisbane core repository including Amoco DDH 83-1, Amoco DDH 83-2, Amoco DDH 83-3, Amoco DDH 83-4, Argyle Creek 1, Armraynald 1, Burketown 1, Desert Creek 1, Egilabria 1, Egilabria 2 DW1, Egilabria 4, Morstone 1, MORSTONE DDH1. This data was generated at the Isotope and Organic Geochemistry Laboratory at Geoscience Australia as part of the Exploring for the Future program.

<b>Please Note:</b> The data related to this Abstract can be obtained by contacting <a href = "mailto: clientservices@ga.gov.au">Manager Client Services</a> and quoting Catalogue number 144231. The data are arranged by regions, so please download the Data Description document found in the Downloads tab to determine your area of interest. Remotely sensed datasets provide fundamental information for understanding the chemical, physical and temporal dynamics of the atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere. Satellite remote sensing has been used extensively in mapping the nature and characteristics of the terrestrial land surface, including vegetation, rock, soil and landforms, across global to local-district scales. With the exception of hyper-arid regions, mapping rock and soil from space has been problematic because of vegetation that either masks the underlying substrate or confuses the spectral signatures of geological materials (i.e. diagnostic mineral spectral features), making them difficult to resolve. As part of the Exploring for the Future program, a new barest earth Landsat mosaic of the Australian continent using time-series analysis significantly reduces the influence of vegetation and enhances mapping of soil and exposed rock from space. Here, we provide a brief background on geological remote sensing and describe a suite of enhanced images using the barest earth Landsat mosaic for mapping surface mineralogy and geochemistry. These geological enhanced images provide improved inputs for predictive modelling of soil and rock properties over the Australian continent. In one case study, use of these products instead of existing Landsat TM band data to model chromium and sodium distribution using a random forest machine learning algorithm improved model performance by 28–46%.

This Geoscience Australia Record reports the findings of the Canning Basin Petroleum Systems Modelling Project. The southern, frontier portions of the Canning Basin have numerous potential hydrocarbon play opportunities, in particular unconventional gas plays, which remain untested. Of particular interest are Ordovician-aged petroleum systems. Geoscience Australia in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Western Australia acquired an 872 km long 2D seismic line across the south and south-west Canning Basin in 2018, and drilled the 2680 m stratigraphic hole Barnicarndy 1 in the Barnicarndy Graben to further develop the understanding of hydrocarbon prospectivity in these frontier regions. As part of the Exploring for the Future program Geoscience Australia contracted GNS Science to construct ten 1D petroleum systems models and one 2D model across the frontier southern parts of the basin. The aim was to combine interpretation of the newly acquired seismic data with interpretation of legacy and new well data, in particular organic geochemical data, to improve the understanding of the burial and thermal history, trap formation, generation and migration of hydrocarbons in the southern, frontier parts of the Canning Basin. This Record is a compilation of the work completed by GNS Science International Limited and the reports containing new data collected and analyzed relevant to the petroleum systems modelling.

<div>NDI Carrara 1 is a deep stratigraphic drill hole completed in 2020 as part of the MinEx CRC National Drilling Initiative (NDI) in collaboration with Geoscience Australia and the Northern Territory Geological Survey. It is the first test of the Carrara Sub-Basin, a depocentre newly discovered in the South Nicholson region based on interpretation from seismic surveys (L210 in 2017 and L212 in 2019) recently acquired as part of the Exploring for the Future program. The drill hole intersected approximately 1100 m of Proterozoic sedimentary rocks uncomformably overlain by 630 m of Cambrian Georgina Basin carbonates. A comprehensive geochemical program designed to provide information about the region’s resource potential was carried out on samples collected at up to 4 meter intervals. This report presents data from Rock-Eval pyrolysis analyses undertaken by Geoscience Australia on selected rock samples to establish their total organic carbon content, hydrocarbon-generating potential and thermal maturity.</div>

NDI Carrara 1 is a deep stratigraphic drill hole completed in 2020 as part of the MinEx CRC National Drilling Initiative (NDI) in collaboration with Geoscience Australia and the Northern Territory Geological Survey. It is the first test of the Carrara Sub-Basin, a depocentre newly discovered in the South Nicholson region based on interpretation from seismic surveys (L210 in 2017 and L212 in 2019) recently acquired as part of the Exploring for the Future program. The drill hole intersected approximately 1100 m of Proterozoic sedimentary rocks uncomformably overlain by 630 m of Cambrian Georgina Basin carbonates. A comprehensive geochemical program designed to provide information about the region’s resource potential was carried out on samples collected at up to 4 meter intervals. This report presents part 1 of the data from Rock-Eval pyrolysis analyses undertaken by Geoscience Australia on selected rock samples to establish their total organic carbon content, hydrocarbon-generating potential and thermal maturity.

Remotely sensed datasets provide fundamental information for understanding the chemical, physical and temporal dynamics of the atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere. Satellite remote sensing has been used extensively in mapping the nature and characteristics of the terrestrial land surface, including vegetation, rock, soil and landforms, across global to local-district scales. With the exception of hyper-arid regions, mapping rock and soil from space has been problematic because of vegetation that either masks the underlying substrate or confuses the spectral signatures of geological materials (i.e. diagnostic mineral spectral features), making them difficult to resolve. As part of the Exploring for the Future program, a new barest earth Landsat mosaic of the Australian continent using time-series analysis significantly reduces the influence of vegetation and enhances mapping of soil and exposed rock from space. Here, we provide a brief background on geological remote sensing and describe a suite of enhanced images using the barest earth Landsat mosaic for mapping surface mineralogy and geochemistry. These geological enhanced images provide improved inputs for predictive modelling of soil and rock properties over the Australian continent. In one case study, use of these products instead of existing Landsat TM band data to model chromium and sodium distribution using a random forest machine learning algorithm improved model performance by 28–46%. <b>Citation:</b> Wilford, J. and Roberts, D., 2020. Enhanced barest earth Landsat imagery for soil and lithological modelling. In: Czarnota, K., Roach, I., Abbott, S., Haynes, M., Kositcin, N., Ray, A. and Slatter, E. (eds.) Exploring for the Future: Extended Abstracts, Geoscience Australia, Canberra, 1–4.

An estimate of the spectra of the barest state (i.e., least vegetation) observed from imagery of the Australian continent collected by the Landsat 5, 7, and 8 satellites over a period of more than 30 years (1983 – 2018). The bands include BLUE (0.452 - 0.512), GREEN (0.533 - 0.590), RED, (0.636 - 0.673) NIR (0.851 - 0.879), SWIR1 (1.566 - 1.651) and SWIR2 (2.107 - 2.294) wavelength regions. The approach is robust to outliers (such as cloud, shadows, saturation, corrupted pixels) and also maintains the relationship between all the spectral wavelengths in the spectra observed through time. The product reduces the influence of vegetation and allows for more direct mapping of soil and rock mineralogy. This product complements the Landsat-8 Barest Earth which is based on the same algorithm but just uses Landsat8 satellite imagery from 2013-2108. Landsat-8’s OLI sensor provides improved signal-to-noise radiometric (SNR) performance quantised over a 12-bit dynamic range compared to the 8-bit dynamic range of Landsat-5 and Landsat-7 data. However the Landsat 30+ Barest Earth has a greater capacity to find the barest ground due to the greater temporal depth. Reference: Exposed Soil and Mineral Map of the Australian Continent Revealing the Land at its Barest - Dale Roberts, John Wilford and Omar Ghattas Ghattas (2019). Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13276-1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13276-1

Data in the GEOCHEM database comprises inorganic geochemical analytical data and associated metadata. Geochemical data comprises concentration data (value, error, unit of measure) measured on a range of analytical instruments, for a range of elements of the periodic table. Associated metadata includes information on analytical techniques, analytical methodology, laboratory, analysts, date of analysis, detection limits, accuracy, and precision. The GEOCHEM database also records results for reference standards. Data is specifically for rocks, soils and other unconsolidated geological material and does not include oils, gases or water analyses. Geochemical data may be total rock (i.e., whole rock analysed) or for a variety of fractions of the total rock, e.g., various non-total acid digests, mineral separates, differing size fractions. It also includes quantitative to semi-quantitative data from field measurements, such as portable x-ray fluorescence (XRF). It does not include geochemical data for individual minerals. <b>Value: </b>Geochemical data underpins much geoscientific study, and is used directly to classify, characterise and understand geological material and its formation. It has direct relevance to understanding the formation of the earth, the continents, and the processes that create and shape the surface we live on. For example, this information is used within: both discovering and the understanding of mineral deposits we depend on; the nature, health and sustainability of the soils we live and farm on; as well as providing input into a range of potential geohazards. <b>Scope: </b>The collection includes data from over 60 years of Geoscience Australia (GA) and state/territory partner regional geological projects within Australia, as well as continental-scale and regional geochemical surveys like National Geochemical Survey of Australia (NGSA) and Northern Australia Geochemical Survey (NAGS) (Exploring for the Future- EFTF). It also includes data from other countries that GA has worked with, e.g., Papua New Guinea, Antarctica, Solomon Islands and New Zealand. Explore the <b>Geoscience Australia portal - <a href="https://portal.ga.gov.au/">https://portal.ga.gov.au/</a></b>

The Sentinel-2 Bare Earth thematic product provides the first national scale mosaic of the Australian continent to support improved mapping of soil and geology. The bare earth algorithm using all available Sentinel-2 A and Sentinel-2 B observations up to September 2020 preferentially weights bare pixels through time to significantly reduce the effect of seasonal vegetation in the imagery. The result are image pixels that are more likely to reflect the mineralogy and/or geochemistry of soil and bedrock. The algorithm uses a high-dimensional weighted geometric median approach that maintains the spectral relationships across all Sentinel-2 bands. A similar bare earth algorithm has been applied to Geoscience Australia’s deeper Landsat time series archive (please search for "Landsat barest Earth". Both bare earth products have spectral bands in the visible near infrared and shortwave infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, the main visible and near-infrared Sentinel-2 bands have a spatial resolution of 10 meters compared to 30m for the Landsat TM equivalents. The weighted median approach is robust to outliers (such as cloud, shadows, saturation, corrupted pixels) and also maintains the relationship between all the spectral wavelengths in the spectra observed through time. Not all the sentinel-2 bands have been processed - we have excluded atmospheric bands including 1, 9 and 10. The remaining bands have been re-number 1-10 and these bands correlate to the original bands in brackets below: 1 = blue (2) , 2 = green (3) , 3 = red (4), 4 = vegetation red edge (5), 5 = vegetation red edge (6), 6= vegetation red edge (7), 7 = NIR(8), 8 = Narrow NIR (8a), 9 = SWIR1 (11) and 10 = SWIR2(12). All 10 bands have been resampled to 10 meters to facilitate band integration and use in machine learning.