Landsat Path Row Map

The Otway-Sorell study is part of Infoterra's Global Seeps programme - a multi-phase two year exploration programme to create the definitive offshore seeps database for the worldwide exploration industry. The Otway-Sorell Basin study includes interpretations by Infoterra and Geoscience Australia that correlate multiple seep clusters with regional seismic and gravity datasets. The study provides exciting new evidence on the oil prospectivity of this offshore region.

The product SAR.PRI is a digital image generated from raw SAR data using up-to-date auxiliary parameters, corrected for antenna elevation gain and range spreading loss. The image, projected on ground range, covers an area 75km wide and at least 75 km long. The JERS SAR.PRI format is based on the general definition of the SAR CEOS format (ref. ER-IS-EPO-GS-5902).

ALOS PALSAR DATA (Level 1.1-1.5) DATA FORMAT (Revision I) from Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan.

The JERS-1 satellite was developed by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). JERS-1 was launched in February 1992 and operated until 11 October 1998. The satellite traveled at an altitude of 568 kilometres and provided coverage of the entire globe every 44 days. The L-band, Synthetic Appeture Radar (SAR) sensor was the primary Earth-observing instrument. The SAR is an active microwave sensor capable of imaging earth resource targets regardless of time of day, cloud, haze or smoke cover of an area. The instrument is classified "active" as it emits the energy necessary to image the earth's surface. In contrast, "passive" or "optical" sensors rely on the sun's reflected energy to image the earth. The SAR ground swath is 75 kilometres wide, with a nominal 18 metre pixel resolution. The sensor has HH polarisation. ACRES JERS SAR acquisition commenced in September 1993 and ended in October 1998.

Earth Observation -1 (EO-1) satellite was launched in November 2000 to demonstrate new technologies such as Hyperion (hyperspectral data containing 220 bands) and Advanced Land Imager (ALI) sensor. ACRES downlinks EO-1 data for USGS through an informal arrangement with NASA but there is no local archive or catalogue. However, ACRES distributes EO-1 products imported from US through a special arrangement with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). This special arrangement permits ACRES customers to receive unlimited acquisitions over their area of interest until it is successfully acquired with <25% cloud cover.

This two year collaborative project was established in July 2006 with the overall aim of developing, validating, evaluating and delivering a suite of publicly available, pre-competitive mineral mapping products from airborne HyMap hyperspectral imagery and satellite multispectral ASTER imagery. Moreover, it was important to establish whether these mineral maps would complement other precompetitive geological and geophysical data and provide valuable new information regards enhanced mineral exploration for industry. A mineral systems approach was used to appreciate the value of these mineral maps for exploration. That is, unlocking the value from these mineral maps is not simply by looking for the red bulls-eyes. Instead, mineral products need to be selected on the basis of critical parameters, such as what minerals are expected to develop as fluids migrate from source rocks to depositional sites and then into outflow zones with each associated with different physicochemical conditions (e.g. metasomatic metal budget, nature of the fluids, water-rock ratios, lithostatic pressure, pore fluid pressure, REDOX, pH, and temperature). One of the other key messages is to be able to recognise mineral chemical gradients as well as anomalous cross-cutting effects. These principles were tested using a number of case histories including, (1) the Starra iron oxide Cu-Au deposit; (2) the Mount Isa Pb-Zn-Ag and Cu deposits; and (3) Century Zn, all within the Mount Isa Block. These showed that the interpreted mineral alteration footprints of these mineral systems can be traced 10-15 km away from the metal deposition sites. In summary this project has shown that it is possible to generate accurate, large area mineral maps that provide new information about mineral system footprints not seen in other precompetitive geoscience data and that the vision of a mineral map of Australia is achievable and valuable.

ACRES acquired Landsat 7 satellite images showing bushfires in northern New South Wales in early October 2000. Fire fighters brought more than 80 bushfires under control, after more than 150,000ha of bushland were burnt. The image on the left was acquired on 2 June 2000. The second image shows the extent of the fires in the region from South West Rocks in the south to Grafton and the Clarence River in the North.

The International Forest Carbon Initiative, IFCI, is part of Australia's contribution to international efforts on reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. It focuses on technology transfer to developing countries by assisting them to implement national carbon accounting schemes modelled on that established by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Key inputs to those accounting schemes are mosaics of the best available satellite scenes in a given year. Collections of these mosaics, spanning periods of at least a decade, are used to determine changes to the extent and type of forest cover. Those characterisations are used to determine net forest carbon flux, which is a significant component of overall carbon flows in tropical countries. In support of these activities, Geoscience Australia manages a project to obtain, process, archive and distribute large volumes of satellite data, initially with a focus on Indonesia and other parts of Asia. Three key changes from 'business as usual' activities were required to process and manage, on a large scale, a satellite data time-series to support the International Forest Carbon Initiative. First, at Geoscience Australia, a new facility known as the Earth Observation Data Store is being developed. Secondly, innovative techniques such as the use of USB Flash Drives for data distribution and of DVDs for quick look catalogue distribution have proved beneficial for the participating agencies in developing countries, as well as for data transfers from regional satellite archives. Thirdly, much of the data, especially the Landsat satellite imagery, has for the first time been made available to the users with minimal restrictions, via the employment of open content licensing known as Creative Commons.

Salt lakes, also known as playa lakes, are a common feature of the Australian landscape, and are a strong indicator of our current and past climates. Despite their abundance they have not been extensively studied in Australia, with little research undertaken since the early benchmark work of the 1970s - 1980s (e.g. Bowler, 1971, 1981) which largely focussed on geomorphologic evolutionary patterns and trends. Notwithstanding, salt lakes contain some of the highest levels biological endemism in Australia (DeDecker, 1983) and their unique, and commonly extreme, chemistry offers the potential for distinctive saline mineralisation and potentially economic concentrations of Li, K, B, REEs, Br and U (e.g. Butt et al. 1984; Nissenbaum, 1993; Orris, 2011).