A short article describing the outcomes of the Tasman Frontier Petroleum Industry Workshop held at Geoscience Australia on 8 and 9 March 2012.

Joint Release of the National ASTER geoscience maps at IGC The ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflectance Radiometer) Geoscience Maps are the first public, web-accessible, continent-scale product release from the ASTER Global Mapping data archive. The collaborative Australian ASTER Initiative represents a successful multi-agency endeavour, led by the Western Australian Centre of Excellence for 3D Mineral Mapping (C3DMM) at CSIRO, Geoscience Australia and the State and Territory government geological surveys of Australia, along with other national and international collaborators. National ASTER geoscience map These geoscience maps are released in GIS format as 1:1M map-sheet tiles, from 3,000 ASTER scenes of 60x60km. Each scene was cross-calibrated and validated using independent Hyperion satellite imagery. The new ASTER geoscience products range in their application from local to continental scales, and their uses include mapping of soils for agricultural and environmental management, such as estimating soil loss, dust management and water catchment modelling. They will also be useful for resource exploration, showing host rock, alteration and regolith mineralogy and providing new mineral information at high spatial resolution (30m pixel). This information is not currently available from other pre-competitive geoscience data.

Uraninite dating of the Kintyre deposit and Rossing South prospect using electron probe chemical U-Th-Pb technique.

In 2010 the UN General Assembly appointed a Group of Experts to carry out the first cycle of the Regular Process from 2010 to 2014. The immediate tasks for the Group of Experts include preparing a draft outline for the First Global Integrated Marine Assessment (the Assessment) and to design a process for drafting and reviewing it. Producing the Assessment will be a major undertaking that will have to involve many hundreds of marine experts from around the world in order to succeed. The purpose of this paper is to describe the rationale behind the draft outline for the Assessment and to explain the process envisaged for producing it by the 2014 deadline. It is emphasised that the Assessment outline is a work in progress and that amendments will be made prior to the commencement of its drafting.

In the brief period 2005-2010, geothermal energy showed rapid growth in Australia with many tenements being taken up, significant exploration activities and a number of very deep wells drilled. Since that time, despite world-leading technical success, expenditure, activity, tenement holdings and personnel numbers have decreased markedly. Success has been achieved with the generation of electricity by Geodynamics Ltd at Innamincka, and the creation of a geothermal reservoir by Petratherm Ltd at Paralana. This article examines why this decline has occurred, and looks at the place of geothermal energy in Australia's Clean Energy Future.

Geoscience Australia's Bremer Sub-basin Study is providing the first new frontier exploration opportunity under the Commonwealth Government's New Oil program.

This dataset reflects the boundaries of those Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUA) that have entered the notification process or have been registered and placed on the Register of Indigenous Land Use Agreements (s199A, Native Title Act; Commonwealth). This is a national dataset. Aspatial attribution includes National Native Title Tribunal number, Name, Agreement Type, Proponent, Area and Registration Date.

This dataset reflects the boundaries of claimant and nonclaimant native title applications that have been determined in part or in full, together with attribution about that determination. This dataset is stored nationally. The National Native Title Register (s192, Native Title Act, Commonwealth), is a register containing information about each determination of native title by the Federal or High Court or by a recognized State or Territory body. Determinations are categorized by both process and outcome. Process will be by consent, litigation or unopposed. Outcome will be that native title will have been found to exist in full or part, or been extinguished. Those determinations subject to appeal are also noted.

AUSGeoid98 data files contain a 2 minute grid of AUSGeoid98 data covering the Australian region, which you can use to interpolate geoid-ellipsoid separations for the positions required.You can use your own interpolation software, or you can use Geoscience Australia's Windows Interpolation software (Winter). The data files are text files in a standard format that cover the same area as standard topographic map areas. Files covering both 1:250,000 (approximately 100 x 150 km) and 1:1,000,000 (approximately 400 x 600 km) map areas are available. There is a 4 minute overlap on all sides of each area. Data format: AUSGeoid98 data files have a header record at the start of each file, to distinguish them from the superseded AUSGeoid93 data files. AUSGeoid98 data files show the geoid-ellipsoid separation to 3 decimal places, while the superseded AUSGeoid93 data files showed only 2 decimal places. AUSGeoid98 deflections of the vertical were computed from the geoid-ellipsoid separation surface, while the AUSGeoid93 deflections of the vertical were computed from OSU91A.

AUSGeoid98 data files contain a 2 minute grid of AUSGeoid98 data covering the Australian region, which you can use to interpolate geoid-ellipsoid separations for the positions required.You can use your own interpolation software, or you can use Geoscience Australia's Windows Interpolation software (Winter). The data files are text files in a standard format that cover the same area as standard topographic map areas. Files covering both 1:250,000 (approximately 100 x 150 km) and 1:1,000,000 (approximately 400 x 600 km) map areas are available. There is a 4 minute overlap on all sides of each area. Data format: AUSGeoid98 data files have a header record at the start of each file, to distinguish them from the superseded AUSGeoid93 data files. AUSGeoid98 data files show the geoid-ellipsoid separation to 3 decimal places, while the superseded AUSGeoid93 data files showed only 2 decimal places. AUSGeoid98 deflections of the vertical were computed from the geoid-ellipsoid separation surface, while the AUSGeoid93 deflections of the vertical were computed from OSU91A.