The Canning Basin in northwestern Australia covers an area of over 506,000 sq. km, of which 430,000 sq. km are onshore. The maximum sediment thickness is over 15,000 m, concentrated in two north-west trending depocentres: the Fitzroy Trough - Gregory Sub-basin complex and the Willara Sub-basin - Kidson Sub-basin complex. Onshore sediments range in age from the Early Ordovician to Early Cretaceous while those in the offshore portion of the basin are mostly Triassic to Neogene. Though it is largely covered by onshore petroleum tenements, much of the basin is underexplored. Conventional hydrocarbons have been produced from Devonian carbonates (Blina) and Carboniferous sandstones (Boundary, Lloyd, Point Torment, Sundown, West Kora and West Terrace), with many shows in Ordovician to Permian rocks. The recent Ungani-1 well flowed oil from the Laurel Formation, while in 1967 Yulleroo-1 flowed gas from the same unit. The basin's source rocks have recently been attracting exploration attention for their unconventional hydrocarbon resources. Prospective units include the Ordovician Goldwyer and Bongabinni formations, and the Mississippian Laurel Formation. A new International Geological Timescale (Gradstein et al. 2012) has resulted in changes to the age and duration of most chronological stages. This has implications for the interpreted ages and durations of Canning Basin sedimentary units, with potential ramifications for petroleum modelling. This poster presents an updated biozonation and stratigraphy chart for the Canning Basin, reflecting the 2012 timescale. This provides a baseline for an assessment of the unconventional hydrocarbon potential of the basin, which will be conducted by Geoscience Australia.

Poster abstract submission for the AGU2013 Meeting

The recently released ISC-GEM catalogue was a joint product of the International Seismological Center (ISC) and the Global Earthquake Model (GEM). In a major undertaking it collated, from a very wide range of sources, the surface and body wave amplitude-period pairs from the pre digital era; digital MS, mb and Mw; collated Mw values for 970 earthquakes not included in the Global CMT catalogue; used these values to determine new non-linear regression relationship between MS and Mw and mb and Mw. They also collated arrival picks, from a very wide range of sources, and used these to recompute the location, initially using the EHB location algorithm then revised using the ISC location algorithm (which primarily refined the depth). The resulting catalogues consists of 18871 events that have been relocated and assigned a direct or indirect estimate of Mw. Its completeness periods are, Ms - 7.5 since 1900, Ms - 6.25 1918 and Ms - 5.5 1960. This catalogue assigns, for the first time, an Mw estimate for several Australian earthquakes. For example the 1968 Meckering earthquake the original ML, mb and MS were 6.9, 6.1 and 6.8, with empirical estimates of Mw being 6.7 or 6.8. The ISC-GEM catalogue assigns an Mw of 6.5. We will present a poster of the Australian events in this ISC_GEM catalogue showing, where available, the original ML, mb, Ms, the recalculated mb and Ms, and the assigned Mw. We will discuss the implications of this work for significant Australian earthquakes.

The Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment (GABWRA) provided fundamental underpinning information for the Great Artesian Basin (GAB). Key data sets produced by GABWRA include contact surfaces between major aquifers and aquitards within the GAB. This poster covers the 3D visualisation of these surfaces in GOCAD (R) and in the Geoscience Australia World Wind 3D data viewer. Poster prepared for the International Association of Hydrogeologists congress 2013, Perth, Australia

Poster accepted to the Australian Science Communication Conference 2014 Abstract: EarthSci is a powerful new tool for visualising earth science datasets in four dimensions. This 'Virtual Earth'-style software platform was originally developed by Geoscience Australia to assist its researchers describe, understand and present their findings. As demand for accessible data visualisation has increased, the tool has been redeveloped to increase its stability, useability and flexibility as a presentation and promotional tool. Importantly, EarthSci allows underground features such as groundwater, stratigraphy, mineral systems and faults to be visualised together with surface features such as topography, land cover and satellite data. Presenting them together in a single visualisation environment enables powerful stories about the history, evolution and geophysical construction of our continent to be told. This ability makes EarthSci stand out from other virtual globe environments. The latest version of the tool is designed to be shared, with features that support the visualisation of many different data formats, an in-built animation function that enables fly-throughs to be generated from within the tool and a presentation mode that enables journeys through the virtual globe environment to be constructed. Due to be launched in the first half of 2014, EarthSci is a fully customisable software package that is freely open to developers in any field. Geoscience Australia welcomes collaboration with all those who may be interested in extending its use as a scientific, communication and visualisation tool.

To follow

Displayed at Questacon July 21-22

The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre (JATWC) provides 24/7 monitoring of earthquake and tsunami hazards affecting Australia and the Indian Ocean. The JATWC comprises Geoscience Australia, who undertake earthquake monitoring in Canberra, and the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, who issue tsunami bulletins and monitor the sea level. Earthquakes are monitored at Geoscience Australia in real-time via a total network of over 260 seismic stations from both the Australian National Seismic Network (ANSN); and a collection of global stations, collaborating with other earthquake monitoring groups and organisations locally and internationally. This enables the quick detection and response to local, regional and global earthquakes, and assessment of its potential to generate a tsunami. If an earthquake is deemed to be tsunamigenic, earthquake information is used by the JATWC to deliver a tsunami warning based on the magnitude, depth and location of the earthquake combined with tsunami models. These warnings are supplemented with sea level information to validate the tsunami warning. Geoscience Australia also provides earthquake information and advice about Australian earthquakes and large international earthquakes to the Australian Government and general public. This is valuable for building safer communities in a world where the impacts of natural disasters can be far-reaching.

Introduction: As part of the Offshore Energy Security Program (2007-2011), Geoscience Australia (GA) undertook an integrated regional study of the deepwater Otway and Sorell basins to improve the understanding of the geology and petroleum prospectivity of the region. The under-explored deepwater Otway and Sorell basins lie offshore of southwestern Victoria and western Tasmania in water depths of 100-4,500 m. The basins developed during rifting and continental separation between Australia and Antarctica from the Cretaceous to Cenozoic and contain up to 10 km of sediment. Significant changes in basin architecture and depositional history from west to east reflect the transition from a divergent rifted continental margin to a transform continental margin. The basins are adjacent to hydrocarbon-producing areas of the Otway Basin, but despite good 2D seismic data coverage, they remain relatively untested and their prospectivity poorly understood. The deepwater (>500 m) section of the Otway Basin has been tested by two wells, of which Somerset 1 recorded minor gas shows. Three wells have been drilled in the Sorell Basin, where minor oil shows were recorded near the base of Cape Sorell 1. Structural framework: Using an integrated approach, new aeromagnetic data, open-file potential field, seismic and exploration well data were used to develop new interpretations of basement structure and basin architecture. This analysis has shown that reactivated north-south Paleozoic structures, particularly the Avoca-Sorell Fault System, controlled the transition from extension through transtension to a dominantly strike-slip tectonic regime along this part of the southern margin. Depocentres to the west of this structure are large and deep in contrast to the narrow elongate depocentres to its east. ...

The Stavely Project is a collaborative project between Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of Victoria, which aims to provide a framework for exploration and discovery in the Grampians-Stavely Zone of western Victoria, through the acquisition of pre-competitive geoscientific data. This includes the completion of fourteen stratigraphic drill holes which tested regional geological interpretations and recovered material for detailed geoscientific analysis (Schofield et al., 2015). The new information derived from these stratigraphic drill holes has been incorporated into a 3D geological model which covers a volume of 62 km (E-W) × 94 km (N-S) × 8 km (depth) across the Grampians-Stavely Zone. The focus of this 3D geological model is on the geological units considered to be cover sequences that overly prospective rocks of the Mount Stavely Volcanic Complex. The Mount Stavely Volcanic Complex is considered to be prospective for porphyry Cu-Au and volcanic-hosted massive sulphide mineral systems. Within the volume of interest the units being modelled as cover sequences include the Murray Basin sediments, Grampians Group sediments, Rocklands Volcanic Group and the Newer Volcanic Group basalts. GeoModeller 2014 software was used to create the 3D geological model. GeoModeller utilises an interpolator method for creating 3D geology that is based on potential field theory (Chilès et al., 2004; McInerny et al. 2005). The 3D geological model provides a space where interpretations from multiple datasets can be represented together. Information used to constrain this model includes surface geology (1:50k mapping), stratigraphic drill-holes (VIMP and Stavely), and interpretations from seismic reflection, gravity and magnetic data.