Product catalogue
The Exploring for the Future 2019 Barkly Reflection Seismic Survey: Key discoveries and implication for resources
Exploring for the Future (EFTF) is an ongoing multiyear initiative by the Australian Government, conducted by Geoscience Australia, in partnership with state and Northern Territory government agencies and other partner research institutes. The first phase of the EFTF program (2016-2020) aimed to improve Australia’s desirability for industry investment in resource exploration in frontier or ‘greenfield’ regions across northern Australia. As part of the program, Geoscience Australia employed a range of both established and innovative techniques to gather new precompetitive data and information to develop new insight into the energy, mineral and groundwater resource potential across northern Australia. To maximise impact and to stimulate industry exploration activity, Geoscience Australia focussed activities in greenfield areas where understanding of resource potential was limited.
In order to address this overarching objective under the EFTF program, Geoscience Australia led acquisition of two deep crustal reflection seismic surveys in the South Nicholson region, an understudied area of little previous seismic data, straddling north-eastern Northern Territory and north-western Queensland. The first survey, L210 South Nicholson 2D Deep Crustal Seismic Survey acquired in 2017, consisted of five overlapping seismic lines (17GA-SN1 to SN5), totalling ~1100 line-km. Survey L210 linked directly into legacy Geoscience Australia seismic lines (06GA-M1 and 06GA-M2) in the vicinity of the world-class Pb-Zn Century Mine in Queensland. The results from survey L210 profoundly revised our geological understanding of the South Nicholson region, and led to the key discovery of an extensive sag basin, the Carrara Sub-basin, containing highly prospective late Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic rocks with strong affinities with the adjacent Mount Isa Province and Lawn Hill Platform.
To complement and expand on the outstanding success of the South Nicholson survey and to continue to explore the resource potential across the underexplored and mostly undercover South Nicholson and Barkly regions, a second seismic survey was acquired in late 2019, the Barkly 2D reflection survey (L212). The Barkly seismic survey comprises five intersecting lines (19GA-B1 to B5), totalling ~813 line-km, extending from the NT-QLD border in the south-east, near Camooweal, to the highly prospective Beetaloo Sub-basin in the north-west. The survey ties into the South Nicholson survey (L210), the recently acquired Camooweal 2D reflection seismic survey by the Geological Survey of Queensland and industry 2D seismic in the Beetaloo Sub-basin, leveraging on and maximising the scientific value and impact on all surveys. The Barkly reflection seismic data images the south-western margin of the Carrara Sub-basin and identified additional previously unrecognised, structurally-disrupted basins of Proterozoic strata, bounded by broadly northeast trending basement highs. Critically, the survey demonstrates the stratigraphic continuity of highly prospective Proterozoic strata from the Beetaloo Sub-basin into these newly discovered, but as yet unevaluated, concealed basins and into the Carrara Sub-basin, further attesting to the regions outstanding potential for mineral and hydrocarbon resources. This survey, in concert with the South Nicholson seismic survey and other complementary EFTF funded regional geochemical, geochronology and geophysical data acquisition surveys, significantly improves our understanding of the geological evolution, basin architecture and the resource potential of this previously sparsely studied region.
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2021-03-17
- Date (Publication)
- 2021-03-17T00:54:13
- Citation identifier
- Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/145107
- Citation identifier
- Digital Object Identifier/https://dx.doi.org/10.26186/145107
- Cited responsible party
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Publisher Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Author Southby, C.
MEG Internal Contact Author Rollet, N.
MEG Internal Contact Author Carson, C.
MEG Internal Contact Author Carr, L.
MEG Internal Contact Author Henson, P.
MEG Internal Contact Author Fomin, T.
MEG Internal Contact Author Costelloe, R.
MEG Internal Contact Author Doublier, M.
MEG Internal Contact Author Close, D.
External Contact
- Purpose
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extended abstract and presentation at AGES 2021
- Status
- Accepted
- Point of contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Point of contact Southby, C.
MEG Internal Contact
- Spatial representation type
- Topic category
-
- Geoscientific information
Extent
Temporal extent
- Time period
- 2019-09-15 2019-11-03
Extent
))
- Maintenance and update frequency
- As needed
Resource format
- Title
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Product data repository: Various Formats
- Website
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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
- theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
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GEOLOGY
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EARTH SCIENCES
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OTHER EARTH SCIENCES
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- Theme
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EFTF
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- Theme
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Exploring For The Future
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- Place
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Barkly Tablelands
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- Discipline
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Reflection Seismic
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- Place
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South Nicholson region
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- Feature type
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Carrara Sub-basin
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- Feature type
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Beetaloo Sub-basin
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- Keywords
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Published_External
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Resource constraints
- Title
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
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CC-BY
- Edition
-
4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- License
Resource constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Distribution Information
- Distributor contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Distributor Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice
- OnLine resource
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Download the Abstract (pdf) [4.0 MB]
Download the Abstract (pdf) [4.0 MB]
- Distribution format
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pdf
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- OnLine resource
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Download the Presentation (pptx) [20.7 MB]
Download the Presentation (pptx) [20.7 MB]
- Distribution format
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pptx
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Resource lineage
- Statement
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Abstract for the Annual Geosciences Exploration Seminar (AGES) in Alice Springs (April 2021), data from the Barkly deep crustal reflection survey (L212) completed in 2019.
Metadata constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/9a530b3f-68e0-4dfc-93b5-0c8e5cdc2b0a
- 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 Southby, C.
MEG Internal Contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Document
- Name
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GA publication: Abstract
Alternative metadata reference
- Title
-
Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with
uuid
- Citation identifier
- eCatId/145107
- Date info (Creation)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
- Date info (Revision)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
Metadata standard
- Title
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AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-3
- Title
-
Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014
- Edition
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Version 2.0, September 2018
- Citation identifier
- https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551