This preliminary report will provide a geochemical and ionic characterisation of groundwater, to determine baseline conditions and, if possible, to distinguish between different aquifers in the Laura basin. The groundwater quality data will be compared against the water quality guidelines for aquatic ecosystem protection, drinking water use, primary industries, use by industry, recreation and aesthetics, and cultural and spiritual values to assess the environmental values of groundwater and the treatment that may be required prior to reuse or discharge.

Vertical geochemical profiling of the marine Toolebuc Formation, Eromanga Basin - implications for shale gas/oil potential The regionally extensive, marine, mid-Cretaceous (Albian) Toolebuc Formation, Eromanga Basin hosts one of Australia's most prolific potential source rocks. However, its general low thermal maturity precludes pervasive petroleum generation, although regions of high heat flow and/or deeper burial may make it attractive for unconventional (shale gas and shale oil) hydrocarbon exploration. Previous studies have provided a good understanding of the geographic distribution of the marine organic matter in the Toolebuc Formation where total organic carbon (TOC) contents range to over 20% with approx. half being of labile carbon and convertible to gas and oil. This study focuses on the vertical profiling, at the decimetre to metre scale, of the organic and inorganic geochemical fingerprints within the Toolebuc Formation with a view to quantify fluctuations in the depositional environment and mode of preservation of the organic matter and how these factors influence hydrocarbon generation thresholds. The Toolebuc Formation from three wells, Julia Creek-2 and Wallimbulla-2 and -3, was sampled over an interval from 172 to 360m depth. The total core length was 27m from which 60 samples were selected. Cores from the underlying Wallumbilla Formation (11 samples over 13m) and the overlying Allaru Mudstone (3 samples) completed the sample set. Bulk geochemical analyses included %TOC, %carbonate, %total S, -15N kerogen, -13C kerogen, -13C carbonate, -18O carbonate, and major, minor and tracer elements and quantitative mineralogy. More detailed organic geochemical analyses involved molecular fossils (saturated and aromatic hydrocarbons, and metalloporphyrins), compound specific carbon isotopes of n-alkanes, pyrolysis-gas chromatography and compositional kinetics. etc.

The impacts of climate change on sea level rise (SLR) will adversely affect infrastructure in a significant number of Australian coastal communities. A first-pass national assessment has identified the extent and value of infrastructure potentially exposed to impacts from future climate by utilizing a number of fundamental national scale datasets. A mid-resolution digital elevation model was used to model a series of SLR projections incorporating 100 year return-period storm-tide estimates where available (maximum tidal range otherwise). The modeled inundation zones were overlaid with a national coastal geomorphology dataset, titled the Smartline, which identified coastal landforms that are potentially unstable under the influence of rising sea level. These datasets were then overlain with Geoscience Australia's National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) to quantify the number and value of infrastructure elements (including residential and commercial buildings, roads and rail) potentially vulnerable to a range of sea-level rise and coastal recession estimates for the year 2100. In addition, we examined the changes in exposure under a range of future Australian Bureau of Statistics population scenarios. We found that over 270,000 residential buildings are potentially vulnerable to the combined impacts of inundation and recession by 2100 (replacement value of approximately $A72 billion). Nearly 250,000 residential buildings were found to be potentially vulnerable to inundation only ($A64 billion). Queensland and New South Wales have the largest vulnerability considering both value of infrastructure and the number of buildings affected. Nationally, approximately 33,000 km of road and 1,500 km of rail infrastructure are potentially at risk by 2100.

The shallow water equations are widely used to model flood and tsunami flows, for example to develop inundation maps for hazard and risk assessments. Finite volume numerical methods are commonly used to derive approximate solutions to these problems, because of their potential to exactly conserve mass and momentum, and correctly simulate both smoothly and rapidly varying flows. However, there remain several common scenarios which often cause numerical difficulties. The occurrence of stationary water near complex wet-dry boundaries is a standard initial condition for tsunami applications. Many numerical methods will generate spurious waves in this situation, which can propagate into the flow domain and contaminate the solution. A related situation involves the simulation of run-off caused by direct rainfall inputs, which is often desirable for flood applications as an alternative to providing discharge inputs derived from rainfall-runoff models. Conserving mass and avoiding unrealistic 'spikes' in the simulated flow velocities can be challenging, particularly when the flow depth is much shallower than the elevation range of each mesh cell, as is practically unavoidable in large scale applications. Several techniques to robustly treat these situations have been implemented in variants of the ANUGA hydrodynamic model, and the performance of these is assessed in a range of ideal and practical examples.

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services offer a cost efficient technology that permits transfer of standardised data from distributed sources, removing the need for data to be regularly uploaded to a centralised database. When combined with community defined exchange standards, the OGC services offer a chance to access the latest data from the originating agency and return the data in a consistent format. Interchange and mark-up languages such as the Geography Markup Language (GML) provide standard structures for transferring geospatial information over the web. The IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI) has an on-going collaborative project to develop a data model and exchange language based on GML for geological map and borehole data, the GeoScience Mark-up Language (GeoSciML). The Australian Government Geoscience Information Committee (GGIC) has used the GeoSciML model as a basis to cover mineral resources (EarthResourceML), and the Canadian Groundwater Information Network (GIN) has extended GeoSciML into the groundwater domain (GWML). The focus of these activities is to develop geoscience community schema that use globally accepted geospatial web service data exchange standards.

The Australian Government formally releases new offshore exploration areas at the annual APPEA conference. These areas are located across various offshore hydrocarbon provinces ranging from mature basins with ongoing oil and gas production to exploration frontiers. In support of the annual acreage release, Geoscience Australia (GA) provides a variety of technical information with an emphasis on basin evolution, stratigraphic frameworks and overviews of hydrocarbon prospectivity. In recent years, GA's petroleum geological studies have significantly high graded the prospectivity of large underexplored offshore regions such as the Ceduna Sub-basin and the Northern Perth Basin. A new program is now targeting areas that lie adjacent to producing regions with the aim to delineate the occurrence and distribution of petroleum systems elements in less explored or in unsuccessful areas and to provide a comprehensive overview of the regional geological evolution. Updates to the stratigraphic framework and new results from geochemical studies are already available and are used for prospectivity assessments. Furthermore, the Australian government continues to assist offshore exploration activities by providing free access to a wealth of geological and geophysical data.

As part of initiatives by the Australian and Queensland Governments to support energy security and mineral exploration, a deep seismic reflection survey was conducted in 2007 to establish the architecture and geodynamic framework of north Queensland. With additional support from AuScope, nearly 1400 km of seismic data were acquired along four lines, extending from near Cloncurry in the west to almost the Queensland coast. Important results based on the interpretation of the deep seismic data include: (1) A major, west-dipping, Paleo-proterozoic (or older) crustal boundary, which we interpret as a suture, separates relatively homogenous, thick crust of the Mt Isa Province from thinner, two layered crust to the east. This boundary is also imaged by magnetotelluric data and 3D inversion of aeromagnetic and gravity data. (2) East of the Mt Isa Province the lower crust is highly reflective and has been subdivided into three mappable seismic provinces (Numil, Abingdon and Agwamin) which are not exposed at the surface. Nd model ages from granites sampled at the surface above the western Numil and central Abingdon Seismic Provinces have very similar Nd model ages, suggesting that both provinces may have had a very similar geological history. By contrast, granites sampled above the eastern Agwamin Seismic Province have much younger Nd model ages, implying a significantly younger component in the lower crust; we consider that the Agwamin Seismic Province contains a strong Grenvillean-age component.

TBC

The 'River Murray Corridor (RMC) Salinity Mapping Project', provides important new information in relation to salinity hazard and management along in a 20 km-wide swath along a 450 km reach of the River Murray. The project area contains iconic wetlands, national and state forest parks, irrigation and dryland farming assets and the Murray River, significant areas of which are at risk from increasing salinisation of the River, the floodplain, and underlying groundwater resources. The project utilised a hydrogeological systems approach to integrate and analyse data obtained from a large regional airborne electromagnetic (AEM) survey (24,000 line km @ 150m line-spacing in a 20 km-wide swath along the Murray River), field mapping, and lithological and hydrogeochemical data obtained from drilling. New holistic inversions of the AEM data have been used to map key elements of the hydrogeological system and salinity extent in the shallow sub-surface (top 20-50 m). The Murray River is known to display great complexity in surface-groundwater interactions along its course. Electrical geophysical methods (such as AEM) are able to map surface-groundwater interaction due to the contrast between (electrically resistive) fresh water in the river, and (electrically conductive) brackish to saline groundwater in adjacent sediments. The location of significant river flush zones is influenced both by underlying geology and the location of locks, weirs and irrigation districts. The study has also identified significant areas of high salinity hazard in the floodplain and river, and quantified the salt store and salt load across the floodplain. The study has also identified sub-surface factors (including saline groundwater, shrinking flush zones, declining water tables) linked to vegetation health declines.

To be included in the conference proceedings, expanding on abstract submitted for oral presentation (Geocat No. 73253)