This web map service provides the locations and status, as at 30 June 2020, of Australian operating mines, mines under development, mines on care and maintenance and resource deposits associated with critical minerals. Developing mines are deposits where the project has a positive feasibility study, development has commenced or all approvals have been received. Mines under care and maintenance and resource deposits are based on known resource estimations and may produce critical minerals in the future.

This web map service provides the locations and status, as at 30 June 2020, of Australian operating mines, mines under development, mines on care and maintenance and resource deposits associated with critical minerals. Developing mines are deposits where the project has a positive feasibility study, development has commenced or all approvals have been received. Mines under care and maintenance and resource deposits are based on known resource estimations and may produce critical minerals in the future.

This web map service provides the locations and status, as at 30 June 2020, of Australian operating mines, mines under development, mines on care and maintenance and resource deposits associated with critical minerals. Developing mines are deposits where the project has a positive feasibility study, development has commenced or all approvals have been received. Mines under care and maintenance and resource deposits are based on known resource estimations and may produce critical minerals in the future.

Waukarlycarly 1 is a stratigraphic well drilled in the southern part of the Canning Basin’s Waukarlycarly Embayment under Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future program in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Western Australia to provide stratigraphic data for this poorly understood tectonic component. The well intersects a thin Cenozoic section, overlying Permian–Carboniferous fluvial clastics and glacial diamictites, with a thick pre-Carboniferous succession (855–2585 mRT) unconformably overlying the Neoproterozoic metasediments. Three informal siliciclastic intervals were defined based on the data from core lithology, well logs, fluid inclusions, chemical and mineral compositions; an Upper Sandstone (855–1348.1 mRT), a Middle Interval (1348.1–2443.4 mRT) and a Lower Sandstone (2443.4 –2585 mRT). The Middle Interval was further divided into six internal zones. Conventional methods were applied to interpret effective porosity, water saturation and elastic properties (Poisson’s ratio and Young’s modulus). Artificial neural network technology was employed on well logs to interpret the total organic carbon (TOC) content, pyrolysis products from the cracking of organic matter (S2), permeability, and mineral compositions. In the Upper Sandstone, average sandstone porosity and permeability are 17.9% and 464.5 mD and, 6.75 % and 10 mD in the Lower Sandstone. The Middle Interval claystone has an average porosity and permeability of 4.17 % and 0.006 mD, and average TOC content and S2 of 0.17 wt% and 0.047 mg HC/g rock with maximum values of 0.66 wt% and 0.46 mg HC/g rock. Average Poisson’s ratio and Young’s modulus of the claystone are 0.154 and 9.81 GPa. Correlations of mineral compositions, petrophysical, geomechanical and geochemical properties of the Middle Interval have been conducted. Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio are well correlated with the contents of key minerals, including Quartz, carbonates and TotalClay. Although TOC content is low at Waukarlycarly 1, hydrocarbon generation and migration have occurred elsewhere in the Waukarlycarly Embayment. The helium response just above the Neoproterozoic basement in the FIS profile is not associated with the hydrocarbon responses implying that these fluids have different sources.

AusAEM (WA) 2020-21, Eastern Goldfields & East Yilgarn Airborne Electromagnetic Survey The accompanying data package, titled “AusAEM (WA) 2020-21, Eastern Goldfields & East Yilgarn Airborne Electromagnetic Survey Blocks: TEMPEST® airborne electromagnetic data and GALEI conductivity estimates”, was released on 4 February 2021 by Geoscience Australia (GA) and the Geological Survey of Western Australia. The data represents the first phase of the AusAEM2020 (WA) survey flown with a fixed-wing aircraft by CGG Aviation (Australia) Pty. Ltd. under contract to Geoscience Australia, using the TEMPEST® airborne electromagnetic system. The survey was flown at a 20-kilometre nominal line spacing over the most eastern part of the state and down to the southern coast of Western Australia. The total area encompasses close to 32,680 line kilometres of newly acquired airborne electromagnetic geophysical data. CGG also processed the data. This package contains 18,482 line kilometres of the survey data, which have been quality-controlled, processed and inverted. The East Yilgarn Block entailed approximately 12,590 line kilometres and the Eastern Goldfields 5,892 line kilometres. The remaining data will be released as a separate package. Geoscience Australia and Western Australia (Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety) commissioned the AusAEM 2020 survey as part of the national airborne electromagnetic acquisition program, to complete 20km line separation AEM coverage over WA. The program is designed to deliver freely available pre-competitive geophysical data to assist in the investigation and discovery of potential mineral, energy and groundwater resources within Australia. Funding for the survey came from the Western Australian government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme. GA managed the survey data acquisition, processing, contracts, quality control of the survey and generated the inversion products included in the data package. The data release package contains 1. A data release package summary PDF document. 2. The survey logistics and processing report and TEMPEST® system specification files 3. ESRI shapefiles for the regional and infill flight lines 4. Final processed point located line data in ASEG-GDF2 format 5. Conductivity estimates generated by CGG’s EMFlow conductivity-depth transform -point located line data output from the inversion in ASEG-GDF2 format -graphical (PDF) multiplot conductivity sections and profiles for each flight line -Grids generated from CGG's inversion conductivity-depth transform in ER Mapper® format (layer conductivities) 6. Conductivity estimates generated by Geoscience Australia's inversion -point located line data output from the inversion in ASEG-GDF2 format -graphical (PDF) multiplot conductivity sections and profiles for each flight line -georeferenced (PNG) conductivity sections (suitable for pseudo-3D display in a 2D GIS) -GoCAD™ S-Grid 3D objects (suitable for various 3D packages)

This short film promotes Geoscience Australia's online and publicly accessible hydrogen data products. The film steps through the functionality of GA's Australian Hydrogen Opportunities Tool (AusH2), and describes the upcoming Hydrogen Economic Fairways Tool which has been created through a collaborative effort with Monash University.

Petascale archives of Earth observations from space (EOS) have the potential to characterise water resources at continental scales. For this data to be useful, it needs to be organised, converted from individual scenes as acquired by multiple sensors, converted into ‘analysis ready data’ and made available through high performance computing platforms. Moreover, converting this data into insights requires integration of non-EOS datasets that can provide biophysical and climatic context for EOS. Digital Earth Australia has demonstrated its ability to link EOS to rainfall and stream gauge data to provide insight into surface water dynamics during the hydrological extremes of flood and drought. This information is supporting the characterisation of groundwater resources across Australia’s north and could potentially be used to gain an understanding of the vulnerability of transport infrastructure to floods in remote, sparsely gauged regions of northern and central Australia.

The emerging global trend of satellite operators producing analysis ready data combined with open source tools for managing and exploiting this data are leading to more and more countries using Earth observation data to drive progress against key national and international development agendas. This paper provides examples from Australia, Mexico, Switzerland and Tanzania on how the Open Data Cube technology has been combined with analysis ready data to provide new insights and support better policy making across issues as diverse as water resource management through to urbanization and environmental-economic accounting.

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 petroleum systems summary report provides a compilation of the current understanding of petroleum systems for the McArthur Basin, including the prospective Beetaloo Sub-basin. The contents of this report are also available via the Geoscience Australia Portal at https://portal.ga.gov.au/, called The Petroleum Systems Summary Assessment Tool (Edwards et al., 2020). Three summaries have been developed as part of the Exploring for the Future (EFTF) program (Czarnota et al., 2020); the McArthur Basin, the Canning Basin, and a combined summary of the South Nicholson Basin and Isa Superbasin region. The petroleum systems summary reports aim to facilitate exploration by summarising key datasets related to conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon exploration, enabling a quick, high-level assessment the hydrocarbon prospectivity of the region.