Australia's Identified Mineral Resources is an annual national assessment that takes a long-term view of Australian mineral resources likely to be available for mining. The assessment also includes evaluations of long-term trends in mineral resources, world rankings, summaries of significant exploration results and brief reviews of mining industry developments.

Geoscience Australia has produced an Atlas of Australian earthquake scenarios (the Atlas) to support planning and preparedness operations for emergency management agencies. The Atlas provides earthquake scenarios represent realistic “worst-case” events that may impact population centres around Australia. Such scenarios may also support seismic risk assessments for critical infrastructure assets to inform remediation actions that could be taken to improve resilience to rare seismic events in Australia. The Atlas of seismic scenarios uses the underlying science and data of the 2018 National Seismic Hazard Assessment (NSHA18) to identify the magnitudes and epicentre locations of these hypothetical earthquakes. Locations and magnitudes of earthquake scenarios are based upon deaggregation of the NSHA18 hazard model. The USGS ShakeMap software is used to produce ground motion intensity fields with the shaking levels being modified by seismic site conditions mapped at a national scale. Fault sources are incorporated into the Atlas where the magnitude of a given scenario exceeds a threshold magnitude of 6.0 and where the rupture length is likely to be longer than 10 km. If a scenario earthquake is located near a known fault within the Australian Neotectonic Features database, a partial or full-length rupture is modelled along the mapped fault. The Atlas generated two scenarios for each of the160 localities across Australia. The scenarios are based on some of the most likely earthquake magnitude-distance combinations estimated at each site. Output products include shaking contours for a range of intensity measures, including peak acceleration and velocity, as well as response spectral acceleration for 0.3, 1.0 and 3.0 seconds. Also included are raster images and the associated metadata used for generating the scenarios.

The annual offshore petroleum exploration acreage release is part of the government’s strategy to promote offshore oil and gas exploration. Each year, the government invites companies to bid for the opportunity to invest in oil and gas exploration in Australian waters. The 2021 acreage release consists of 21 areas offshore of Western Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and the Ashmore and Cartier Islands.

This web service provides access to the Geoscience Australia (GA) ISOTOPE database containing compiled age and isotopic data from a range of published and unpublished (GA and non-GA) sources. The web service includes point layers (WFS, WMS, WMTS) with age and isotopic attribute information from the ISOTOPE database, and raster layers (WMS, WMTS, WCS) comprising the Isotopic Atlas grids which are interpolations of the point located age and isotope data in the ISOTOPE database.

A review of mineral exploration trends, activities and discoveries in Australia in 2020

This web service depicts potential geological sequestration sites and has been compiled as part of the Australian Petroleum Cooperative Research Centre's GEODISC program (1999-2002).

The Earthquake Scenario Selection is an interactive tool for querying, visualising and downloading earthquake scenarios. There are over 160 sites nationally with pre-generated scenarios available. These represent plausible future scenarios that can be used for earthquake risk management and planning (see https://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/safety/nsha for more details).

The annual offshore petroleum exploration acreage release is part of the government’s strategy to promote offshore oil and gas exploration. Each year, the government invites companies to bid for the opportunity to invest in oil and gas exploration in Australian waters. The 2021 acreage release consists of 21 areas offshore of Western Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and the Ashmore and Cartier Islands.

This report describes the results of an extended national field spectroscopy campaign designed to validate the Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 Analysis Ready Data (ARD) surface reflectance (SR) products generated by Digital Earth Australia. Field spectral data from 55 overpass coincident field campaigns have been processed to match the ARD surface reflectances. The results suggest the Landsat 8 SR is validated to within 10%, the Sentinel 2A SR is validated to within 6.5% and Sentinel 2B is validated to within 6.8% . Overall combined Sentinel 2A and 2B are validated within 6.6% and the SR for all three ARD products are validated to within 7.7%.

Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future Program is investigating the mineral, energy and groundwater resource potential of sedimentary basins and basement provinces in northern Australia and parts of South Australia. A key challenge in exploring Australian onshore sedimentary basins is that these are often areas with limited seismic data coverage to image the sub-surface structural and stratigraphic architecture. Consequently, well logs are often the main data sets that are used to understand the sub-surface geology. Where good seismic data coverage is available, a considerable amount of time is generally required to undertake an integrated interpretation of well and seismic data. The primary aim of this study is to develop a methodology for visualising the three-dimensional tectonostratigraphic architecture of sedimentary basins using just well data, which can then be used to quickly screen areas warranting more detailed studies of resource potential. A workflow is documented which generates three-dimensional well correlations using just well formation tops to visualise the regional structural and stratigraphic architecture of the Amadeus, Canning, Officer and Georgina basins in the Centralian Superbasin. A critical step in the workflow is defining regionally correlatable supersequences that show the spatial linkages and evolution through time of lithostratigraphic units from different basin areas. Thirteen supersequences are defined for the Centralian Superbasin, which were deposited during periods of regional subsidence associated with regional tectonic events. Regional three-dimensional correlation diagrams have been generated to show the spatial distribution of these supersequences, which can be used as a reconnaissance tool for visualising the distribution of key stratigraphic elements associated with petroleum, mineral and groundwater systems. Three-dimensional well correlations are used in this study to redefine the Centralian Superbasin as encompassing all western, northern and central Australian basins that had interconnected depositional systems driven by regional subsidence during one or more regional tectonic events between the Neoproterozoic and middle Carboniferous. The Centralian Superbasin began to form during a series of Neoproterozoic rift-sag events associated with the break-up of the Rodinia Supercontinent at about 830 Ma. Depositional systems in the Amadeus and Officer basins were partially disconnected by an emergent Musgrave Province during these early stages of superbasin evolution. Subsequent regional uplift and erosion of the superbasin occurred during the late Neoproterozoic–early Cambrian Petermann Orogeny. The Officer and Amadeus were permanently disconnected by the uplifted Musgrave Province following this major orogenic event. Rejuvenation of the Centralian Superbasin occurred during middle–late Cambrian extension and subsidence resulting in the generation of several new basins including the Canning Basin. Subsidence during the Ordovician Larapinta Event created an intracontinental seaway that episodically connected the Canning, Amadeus, Georgina and Officer basins to the proto-Pacific Ocean in the east. Fragmentation of the Centralian Superbasin began at the onset of the Alice Springs Orogeny during the Rodingan Event when the uplifted Arunta Region disconnected the Amadeus and Georgina basins. The Rodingan Movement initially disconnected depositional systems between the Canning and Amadeus basins, which promoted the development of a large evaporitic depocentre over the southern Canning Basin. However, these basins subsequently reconnected during the Early Devonian Prices Creek Movement. Complete fragmentation of the Centralian Superbasin occurred during the Late Devonian–middle Carboniferous Pillara Extension Event when the Canning and Amadeus basins became permanently disconnected. Widespread uplift and erosion at the culmination of the Alice Springs Orogeny in the middle Carboniferous resulted in final closure of the Centralian Superbasin.