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A national-scale assessment of carbonatite-related rare earth element mineral system potential in Australia

<div>The production of rare earth elements (REEs) is critical to the global transition to a low carbon economy. Carbonatites represent a significant source of REEs, both domestically within Australia, as well as globally. Given their strategic importance for the Australian economy, a national mineral potential assessment has been undertaken as part of the Exploring for the Future program at Geoscience Australia to evaluate the potential for carbonatite-related REE (CREE) mineral systems. Rather than aiming to identify individual carbonatites and/or CREE deposits, the focus of the mineral potential assessment is to delineate prospective belts or districts within Australia that indicate the presence of favourable criteria, particularly in terms of lithospheric architecture, that may lead to the formation of a CREE mineral system.</div><div><br></div><div>This study demonstrates how national-scale multidisciplinary precompetitive geoscience datasets can be integrated using a hybrid methodology that incorporates robust statistical analysis with mineral systems expertise to predictively map areas that have a higher geological potential for the formation of CREE mineral systems and effectively reduce the exploration search space. Statistical evaluation of the relationship between different mappable criteria that represent spatial proxies for mineral system processes and known carbonatites and CREE deposits has been undertaken to test previously published hypotheses on how to target CREE mineral systems at a broad-scale. The results confirm the relevance of most criteria in the Australian context, while several new criteria such as distance to large igneous province margins and distance to magnetic worms have also been shown to have a strong correlation with known carbonatites and CREE deposits. Using a hybrid knowledge- and data-driven mineral potential mapping approach, the mineral potential map predicts the location of known carbonatite and CREE deposits, while also demonstrating additional areas of high prospectivity in regions with no previously identified carbonatites or CREE mineralisation.</div>

Presented at the AusIMM Critical Minerals Conference 2023.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Creation)
2023-05-02T16:00:00
Date (Publication)
2024-01-31T03:59:58
Citation identifier
Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/147798

Cited responsible party
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Publisher

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice
Author

Ford, A.

Internal Contact
Author

Huston, D.

Internal Contact
Author

Cloutier, J.

External Contact
Author

Schofield, A.

Internal Contact
Author

Cheng, Y.

Internal Contact
Author

Beyer, E.

Internal Contact
Name

AusIMM Critical Minerals Conference 21-23 November 2023, Brisbane, Qld

Purpose

Short abstract for AusIMM Critical Minerals Conference 2023

Status
Completed
Point of contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Resource provider

Minerals, Energy and Groundwater Division

External Contact
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice
Point of contact

Ford, A.

Internal Contact
Spatial representation type
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information

Extent

N
S
E
W


Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned

Resource format

Title

Product data repository: Various Formats

Website

Data Store directory containing the digital product files

Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes

Project
  • EFTF – Exploring for the Future

Project
  • Australia’s Resources Framework

Keywords
  • Mineral potential

Keywords
  • carbonatites

Keywords
  • rare earth elements

Keywords
  • critical minerals

theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
  • Resource geoscience

  • Data mining and knowledge discovery

Keywords
  • Published_External

Resource constraints

Title

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Alternate title

CC-BY

Edition

4.0

Website

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Addressee
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
User

Any

Use constraints
License
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints

© Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2023

Resource constraints

Title

Australian Government Security Classification System

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified
Classification system

Australian Government Security Classification System

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Distribution Information

Distributor contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Distributor

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice facsimile
OnLine resource

Link to Conference Page

Link to Conference Page

Distribution format

Resource lineage

Statement

<div>Multiple national-scale geological and geophysical datasets were used as the basis for generating novel mappable criteria for distinct mineral system components. These have been integrated into a a series of coherent products to assess mineral prospectivity.</div>

Metadata constraints

Title

Australian Government Security Classification System

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/03b55468-4cf3-4d4e-b9d2-812a4f0b5831

Title

GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8
Contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice
Point of contact

Ford, A.

Internal Contact

Type of resource

Resource scope
Document
Name

Conference Abstract

Alternative metadata reference

Title

Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

uuid

Citation identifier
eCatId/147798

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/03b55468-4cf3-4d4e-b9d2-812a4f0b5831

Date info (Creation)
2024-01-31T03:38:59
Date info (Revision)
2024-01-31T03:38:59

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3

Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, September 2018

Citation identifier
http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551

 
 

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

Australia’s Resources Framework EFTF – Exploring for the Future
theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
Data mining and knowledge discovery Resource geoscience

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