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.

The Exploring for the Future program is an initiative by the Australian Government dedicated to boosting investment in resource exploration in Australia. The initial phase of this program led by Geoscience Australia focussed on northern Australia to gather new data and information about the potential mineral, energy and groundwater resources concealed beneath the surface. The northern Lawn Hill Platform is an intracratonic poly-phased history region of Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozic age consisting of mixed carbonates, siliciclastics and volcanics. It is considered a frontier basin with very little petroleum exploration to date, but with renewed interest in shale and tight gas, that may present new exploration opportunities. An understanding of the geochemistry of the sedimentary units, including the organic richness, hydrocarbon-generating potential and thermal maturity, is therefore an important characteristic needed to understand the resource potential of the region. As part of this program, Rock-Eval pyrolysis analyses were undertaken by Geoscience Australia on selected rock samples from 2 wells of the northern Lawn Hill Platform.

The onshore Canning Basin in Western Australia is the focus of a regional hydrocarbon prospectivity assessment being undertaken by the Exploring for the Future (EFTF) program; an Australian Government initiative dedicated to increasing investment in resource exploration in northern Australia. The four-year program led by Geoscience Australia focusses on the acquisition of new data and information about the potential mineral, energy and groundwater resources concealed beneath the surface in northern Australia and parts of South Australia. As part of this program, significant work has been carried out to deliver new pre-competitive data including new seismic acquisition, drilling of a stratigraphic well and the geochemical analysis of geological samples recovered from exploration wells. As part of this comprehensive analytical program, TOC and Rock-Eval pyrolysis analyses were undertaken by Geoscience Australia on selected rock samples from eight wells of the Canning Basin to establish their hydrocarbon-generating potential and thermal maturity. These samples were selected to infill gaps in the existing open file data with a particular focus on the Lower Ordovician Nambeet Formation for comparison with samples from the Waukarlycarly 1 well.

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.

<div><strong>Output type: </strong>Exploring for the Future Extended Abstract</div><div><br></div><div><strong>Short abstract: </strong>Western Tasmania is a rich mineral province that hosts Cambrian VHMS and Devonian granite-related Sn-W systems in the Dundas Element. By comparison, the Rocky Cape region of northwest Tasmania has not been extensively explored for mineral deposits. New U-Pb monazite geochronology and galena Pb isotope data were collected from several sediment-hosted, vein style Cu-Co-Pb-Zn prospects in the Rocky Cape Element of northwest Tasmania. The identification of REE and cobaltite in some samples indicates the potential for critical minerals in this region. This is the first identification of a mineralizing system of Mesoproterozoic age in Tasmania, approximately 800 million years older than the well-known Cambrian mineralisation events in western Tasmania. These data indicate that mineralization formed during the Mesoproterozoic, broadly contemporaneous with the deposition of the Rocky Cape Group.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div><strong>Citation: </strong>Armistead S.E., Meffre S., Bottril R.S., Cross A. &amp; Huston D., 2024. U-Pb monazite geochronology from the Rocky Cape Group: new evidence for Mesoproterozoic Cu-Co-Pb-Zn mineralisation in north-west Tasmania. In: Czarnota, K. (ed.) Exploring for the Future: Extended Abstracts. Geoscience Australia, Canberra, https://doi.org/10.26186/149292</div>

Collection of mineral, gem, meteorite, fossil (including the Commonwealth Palaeontological Collection) and petrographic thin section specimens dating back to the early 1900s. The collection is of scientific, historic, aesthetic, and social significance. Geoscience Australia is responsible for the management and preservation of the collection, as well as facilitating access to the collection for research, and geoscience education and outreach. Over 700 specimens from the collection are displayed in our public gallery . The collection contains: • 15,000 gem, mineral and meteorite specimens from localities in Australia and across the globe. • 45,000 published palaeontological specimens contained in the Commonwealth Palaeontological Collection (CPC) mainly from Australia. • 1,000,000 unpublished fossils in a ‘Bulk Fossil’ collection. • 250,000 petrographic thin section slides. • 200 historical geoscience instruments including: cartography, geophysical, and laboratory equipment." <b>Value: </b>Specimens in the collection are derived from Geoscience Australia (GA) surveys, submissions by researchers, donations, purchases and bequests. A number of mineral specimens are held on behalf of the National Museum of Australia. <b>Scope: </b>This is a national collection that began in the early 1900s with early Commonwealth surveys collecting material across the country and British territories. The mineral specimens are mainly from across Australia, with a strong representation from major mineral deposits such as Broken Hill, and almost 40% from the rest of the world. The majority of fossils are from Australia, with a small proportion from lands historically or currently under Australian control, such as Papua New Guinea and the Australian Antarctic Territory.

A `weighted geometric median’ approach has been used to estimate the median surface reflectance of the barest state (i.e., least vegetation) observed through Landsat-8 OLI observations from 2013 to September 2018 to generate a six-band Landsat-8 Barest Earth pixel composite mosaic over the Australian continent. 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 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. The product reduces the influence of vegetation and allows for more direct mapping of soil and rock mineralogy. Reference: Dale Roberts, John Wilford, and Omar Ghattas (2018). Revealing the Australian Continent at its Barest, submitted.

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.

A `weighted geometric median' approach has been used to estimate the median surface reflectance of the barest state (i.e., least vegetation) observed through Landsat-8 Operational Land Image (OLI) observations from 2013 to September 2018 to generate a six-band Landsat-8 Barest Earth pixel composite mosaic over the Australian continent. 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 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. The product reduces the influence of vegetation and allows for more direct mapping of soil and rock mineralogy. Reference: Dale Roberts, John Wilford, and Omar Ghattas (2018). Revealing the Australian Continent at its Barest, submitted. <b>Value: </b>Has broad application in mapping surface geochemistry and mineralogy of exposed soil and bedrock. Has applications in geological mapping and natural resource management including mapping of soil characteristics. <b>Scope: </b>Two enhanced bare earth products have been generated reflecting different Landsat satellites and acquisition periods. The first only uses Landsat 8 observations from 2013 to 2018. The second incorporates the full 30+ year archive combining Landsat 5, 7, and 8 from 1986 to 2018.

Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future program provides precompetitive information to inform decision-making by government, community and industry on the sustainable development of Australia's mineral, energy and groundwater resources. By gathering, analysing and interpreting new and existing precompetitive geoscience data and knowledge, we are building a national picture of Australia’s geology and resource potential. This leads to a strong economy, resilient society and sustainable environment for the benefit of all Australians. This includes supporting Australia’s transition to net zero emissions, strong, sustainable resources and agriculture sectors, and economic opportunities and social benefits for Australia’s regional and remote communities. The Exploring for the Future program, which commenced in 2016, is an eight year, $225m investment by the Australian Government. This package contains data generated in the field as part of stratigraphic drilling operations in the Delamerian region of the western New South Wales during 2023 funded through the Exploring for the Future program. A range of geological, geophysical and geochemical data are included, as well as associated borehole information such as core photographs. The data can be viewed and downloaded via the Geoscience Australia Portal - https://portal.ga.gov.au/. The data that is available is from several databases which are associated to this record. <i>These data are published with the permission of the CEO, Geoscience Australia. </i>