This service provides Estimates of Geological and Geophysical Surfaces (EGGS). The data comes from cover thickness models based on magnetic, airborne electromagnetic and borehole measurements of the depth of stratigraphic and chronostratigraphic surfaces and boundaries.

<div>This report brings together data and information relevant to understanding the regional geology, hydrogeology, and groundwater systems of the South Nicholson – Georgina (SNG) region in the Northern Territory and Queensland. This integrated, basin-scale hydrogeological assessment is part of Geoscience Australia’s National Groundwater Systems project in the Exploring for the Future program. While the northern Georgina Basin has been at the centre of recent investigations as part of studies into the underlying Beetaloo Sub-basin, no regional groundwater assessments have focused on central and southern parts of the Georgina Basin since the 1970s. Similarly, there has been no regional-scale hydrogeological investigation of the deeper South Nicholson Basin, although the paucity of groundwater data limited detailed assessment of the hydrogeology of this basin. This comprehensive desktop study has integrated numerous geoscience and hydrogeological datasets to develop a new whole-of-basin conceptualisation of groundwater flow systems and recharge and discharge processes within the regional unconfined aquifers of the Georgina Basin.</div><div><br></div><div>Key outputs arising from this study include: (1) the development of a hydrostratigraphic framework for the region, incorporating improved aquifer attribution for over 5,000 bores; and (2) publicly available basin-scale groundwater GIS data layers and maps, including a regional watertable map for the whole Georgina Basin. This regional assessment provides new insights into the hydrogeological characteristics and groundwater flow dynamics within the Georgina Basin, which can aid in the sustainable management of groundwater for current and future users reliant on this critical water resource.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div>

The document summarises new seismic interpretation metadata for two key horizons from Base Jurassic to mid-Cretaceous strata across the western and central Eromanga Basin, and the underlying Top pre-Permian unconformity. New seismic interpretations were completed during a collaborative study between the National Groundwater Systems (NGS) and Australian Future Energy Resources (AFER) projects. The NGS and AFER projects are part of Exploring for the Future (EFTF)—an eight year, $225 million Australian Government funded geoscience data and precompetitive information acquisition program 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 will help support a strong economy, resilient society and sustainable environment for the benefit of all Australians. The EFTF program is supporting Australia’s transition to a low emissions economy, industry and agriculture sectors, as well as economic opportunities and social benefits for Australia’s regional and remote communities. Further details are available at http://www.ga.gov.au/eftf. The seismic interpretations build on previous work undertaken as part of the ‘Assessing the Status of Groundwater in the Great Artesian Basin’ (GAB) Project, commissioned by the Australian Government through the National Water Infrastructure Fund – Expansion (Norton & Rollet, 2022; Vizy & Rollet, 2022; Rollet et al., 2022; Rollet et al., in press.), the NGS Project (Norton & Rollet, 2023; Rollet et al., 2023; Vizy & Rollet, 2023) and the AFER Project (Bradshaw et al., 2022 and in press, Bernecker et al., 2022, Iwanec et al., 2023; Iwanec et al., in press). The recent iteration of revisions to the GAB geological and hydrogeological surfaces (Vizy & Rollet, 2022) provides a framework to interpret various data sets consistently (e.g., boreholes, airborne electromagnetic, seismic data) and in a 3D domain, to improve our understanding of the aquifer geometry, and the lateral variation and connectivity in hydrostratigraphic units across the GAB (Rollet et al., 2022). Vizy and Rollet (2022) highlighted some areas with low confidence in the interpretation of the GAB where further data acquisition or interpretation may reduce uncertainty in the mapping. One of these areas was in the western and central Eromanga Basin. New seismic interpretations are being used in the western Eromanga, Pedirka and Simpson basins to produce time structure and isochore maps in support of play-based energy resource assessment under the AFER Project, as well as to update the geometry of key aquifers and aquitards and the GAB 3D model for future groundwater management under the NGS Project. These new seismic interpretations fill in some data and knowledge gaps necessary to update the geometry and depth of key geological and hydrogeological surfaces defined in a chronostratigraphic framework (Hannaford et al., 2022; Bradshaw et al., 2022 and in press; Hannaford & Rollet, 2023). The seismic interpretations are based on a compilation of newly reprocessed seismic data (Geoscience Australia, 2022), as part of the EFTF program, and legacy seismic surveys from various vintages brought together in a common project with matching parameters (tying, balancing, datum correcting, etc.). This dataset has contributed to a consolidated national data coverage to further delineate groundwater and energy systems, in common data standards and to be used further in integrated workflows of mineral, energy and groundwater assessment. The datasets associated with the product provides value added seismic interpretation in the form of seismic horizon point data for two horizons that will be used to improve correlation to existing studies in the region. The product also provides users with an efficient means to rapidly access a list of core data used from numerous sources in a consistent and cleaned format, all in a single package. The following datasets are provided with this product: 1) Seismic interpretation in a digital format (Appendix A), in two-way-time, on key horizons with publically accessible information, including seismic interpretation on newly reprocessed data: Top Cadna-owie; Base Jurassic; Top pre-Permian; 2) List of surveys compiled and standardised for a consistent interpretation across the study area (Appendix B). 3) Isochore points between Top Cadna-owie and Base Jurassic (CC10-LU00) surfaces (Appendix C). 4) Geographical layer for the seismic lines compiled across Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory (Appendix D). These new interpretations will be used to refine the GAB geological and hydrogeological surfaces in this region and to support play-based energy resource assessments in the western Eromanga, Pedirka and Simpson basins.

<div>This Queensland Geological Record presents ten new Sensitive High Resolution Ion MicroProbe (SHRIMP) U–Pb zircon and monazite results obtained under the auspices of the Geological Survey of Queensland–Geoscience Australia (GSQ–GA) National Collaborative Framework (NCF) geochronology project between July 2017 and June 2018. These data were collected in support of ongoing regional mapping and geoscientific programs led by the GSQ in the Mount Isa region.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><strong>Bibliographic reference:</strong></div><div>Kositcin, N., Lewis, C. J. Withnall, I. W., Slade, A. P., Sargent, S. and Hutton, L. J. 2023. Summary of results. Joint GSQ–GA Geochronology Project: Mount Isa region, 2017–2018. GSQ Record 2023/03. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. Record 2023/32, Geological Survey of Queensland. http://dx.doi.org/10.26186/147793</div>

<div>New Sensitive High Resolution Ion Microprobe (SHRIMP) U–Pb geochronological results for fifteen Proterozoic and late Paleozoic samples, thirteen from the Georgetown Region and two from the adjacent Cairns Region, are presented in this Record. Eleven of the samples are from cores of basement units intersected in drillholes that penetrated overlying rocks of the Karumba (Cenozoic) and Carpentaria (Mesozoic) basins. Three of these are gneisses from the undercover extension of the Yambo Subprovince (Etheridge Province) in the northeastern part of the Georgetown Region, four are of Mesoproterozoic granites from the Forsayth Subprovince (Etheridge Province) and Croydon Province farther south, and the remaining eight are from units forming part of the Carboniferous–Permian Kennedy Igneous Association, including two from surface outcrops in the Georgetown Region and two from surface outcrops in the adjacent Cairns Region.</div><div><br></div>

<p>Dataset "Detailed surface geology – Upper Burdekin basalt provinces", downloaded from the Queensland Spatial Catalogue in April 2017 and clipped to the Upper Burdekin basalt provinces. <p>The polygons in this dataset are a digital representation of the distribution or extent of geological units within the area. Polygons have a range of attributes including unit name, age, lithological description and an abbreviated symbol for use in labelling the polygons. These have been extracted from the Rock Units Table held in Department of Natural Resources and Mines MERLIN Database. <p>© State of Queensland (Department of Natural Resources and Mines) 2017 Creative Commons Attribution

This data package provides seismic interpretations that have been generated in support of the energy resource assessments under the Australia’s Future Energy Resources (AFER) project. Explanatory notes are also included. The AFER project is part of Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future (EFTF) Program—an eight year, $225 million Australian Government funded geoscience data and precompetitive information acquisition program 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, Geoscience Australia is building a national picture of Australia’s geology and resource potential. This will help support a strong economy, resilient society and sustainable environment for the benefit of all Australians. The EFTF program is supporting Australia’s transition to a low emissions economy, industry and agriculture sectors, as well as economic opportunities and social benefits for Australia’s regional and remote communities. Further details are available at http://www.ga.gov.au/eftf. The seismic interpretations build on the recently published interpretations by Szczepaniak et al. (2023) by providing updated interpretations in the AFER Project area for the Top Cadna-owie (CC10) and Top Pre-Permian (ZU) horizons, as well as interpretations for 13 other horizons that define the tops of play intervals being assessed for their energy resource potential (Figure 1). Seismic interpretations for the AFER Project are constrained by play interval tops picked on well logs that have been tied to the seismic profiles using time-depth data from well completion reports. The Pedirka and Western Eromanga basins are underexplored and contain relatively sparse seismic and petroleum well data. The AFER Project has interpreted play interval tops in 41 wells, 12 seismic horizons (Top Cadna-owie and underlying horizons) on 238 seismic lines (9,340 line kilometres), and all 15 horizons on 77 recently reprocessed seismic lines (3,370 line kilometres; Figure 2). Note that it has only been possible to interpret the Top Mackunda-Winton, Top Toolebuc-Allaru and Top Wallumbilla horizons on the reprocessed seismic lines as these are the only data that provide sufficient resolution in the shallow stratigraphic section to confidently interpret seismic horizons above the Top Cadna-owie seismic marker. The seismic interpretations are provided as point data files for 15 horizons, and have been used to constrain the zero edges for gross-depositional environment maps in Bradshaw et al. (2023) and to produce depth-structure and isochore maps for each of the 14 play intervals in Iwanec et al. (2023). The data package includes the following datasets: 1) Seismic interpretation point file data in two-way-time for up to 15 horizons using newly reprocessed seismic data and a selection of publicly available seismic lines (Appendix A). 2) Geographical layers for the seismic lines used to interpret the top Cadna-owie and underlying horizons (Cadnaowie_to_TopPrePermian_Interpretation.shp), and the set of reprocessed lines used to interpret all 15 seismic horizons (All_Horizons_Interpretation.shp; Appendix B). These seismic interpretations are being used to support the AFER Project’s play-based energy resource assessments in the Pedirka and Western Eromanga basins.

Recent national and state assessments have concluded that sedimentary formations that underlie or are within the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) may be suitable for the storage of greenhouse gases. These same formations contain methane and naturally generated carbon dioxide that has been trapped for millions of years. The Queensland government has released exploration permits for Greenhouse Gas Storage in the Bowen and Surat basins. An important consideration in assessing the potential economic, environmental, health and safety risks of such projects is the potential impact CO2 migrating out of storage reservoirs could have on overlying groundwater resources. The risk and impact of CO2 migrating from a greenhouse gas storage reservoir into groundwater cannot be objectively assessed without knowledge of the natural baseline characteristics of the groundwater within these systems. Due to the phase behaviour of CO2, geological storage of carbon dioxide in the supercritical state requires depths greater than 800m, but there are no hydrochemical studies of such deeper aquifers in the prospective storage areas. Geoscience Australia (GA) and the Geological Survey of Queensland (GSQ), Queensland Department of Mines and Energy, worked collaboratively under the National Geoscience Agreement (NGA) to characterise the regional hydrochemistry of the Denison Trough and Surat Basin and trialled different groundwater monitoring strategies. The output from this Project constitutes part of a regional baseline reference set for future site-specific and semi-regional monitoring and verification programmes conducted by geological storage proponents. The dataset provides a reference of hydrochemistry for future competing resource users.

This report presents key results of groundwater barometric response function development and interpretation from the Upper Burdekin Groundwater Project in North Queensland, conducted as part of Exploring for the Future (EFTF)—an eight year, $225 million Australian Government funded geoscience data and information acquisition program focused on better understanding the potential mineral, energy and groundwater resources across Australia. The Upper Burdekin Groundwater Project is a collaborative study between Geoscience Australia and the Queensland Government. It focuses on basalt groundwater resources in two geographically separate areas: the Nulla Basalt Province (NBP) in the south and the McBride Basalt Province (MBP) in the north. The NBP and MBP basalt aquifers are heterogeneous, fractured, vesicular systems. This report assesses how water levels in monitoring bores in the NBP and MBP respond to barometric pressure changes to evaluate the degree of formation confinement. The main process used to evaluate water level response to barometric pressure in this study is based on barometric efficiency (BE). The BE of a formation is calculated by dividing the change in monitoring bore water level by the causative barometric pressure change. Both parameters are expressed in the same units, so BE will typically be some fraction between zero and one. BE is not necessarily constant over time; the way BE changes following a theoretical step change in barometric pressure can be described using a barometric response function (BRF). BRFs were calculated in the time domain and plotted as BE against time lag for interpretation. The BRF shape was used to assess the degree of formation confinement. Although there is some uncertainty due to monitoring bore construction issues (including long effective screens) and potentially air or gas trapped in the saturated zone, all BRFs in the current project are interpreted to indicate unconfined conditions. This finding is supported by the identification of recharge at many monitoring bores through hydrograph analysis in other EFTF project components. We conclude that formations are likely to be unconfined at many project monitoring bores assessed in this study.

The Upper Burdekin Chloride Mass Balance Recharge web service depicts the recharge rates have been estimated at borehole locations in the Nulla and McBride basalt provinces. Using rainfall rates, rainfall chemistry and groundwater chemistry, the recharge rates have been estimated through the Chloride Mass Balance approach.