Product catalogue
Heavy mineral exploration on a continental scale: the Geoscience Australia-Curtin Heavy Mineral Map of Australia project
<div>Although heavy mineral exploration techniques have been successfully used as exploration vectors to ore deposits around the world, exploration case studies and pre-competitive datasets relevant to Australian conditions are relatively limited. The Heavy Mineral Map of Australia (HMMA) project is a novel analytical campaign to determine the abundance and distribution of heavy minerals (SG>2.9 g/cc) in 1315 floodplain sediment samples collected from catchments across Australia during Geoscience Australia’s National Geochemical Survey of Australia (NGSA) project. Archived NGSA samples, which originated from, on average, 60 to 80 cm depth in floodplain landforms, were sub-sampled and subjected to dense media separation and automated SEM-EDS analysis in the John de Laeter Centre at Curtin University. Mineral assay data from all 1315 drainage samples will be publicly released by the end of 2023. </div><div><br></div><div>An initial data package released in August 2022 contains mineralogical assay data for 223 samples from the Darling–Curnamona–Delamerian (DCD) region of south-eastern Australia. That package identified over 140 heavy minerals from 29 million individual mineral observations. The number of mineral observations generated during the project required development of a novel Mineral Network Analysis (MNA) tool to allow end users to discover, visualise and interpret mineral co-occurrence relationships, potentially useful in exploration vectoring and targeting. The MNA tool can also be used to rapidly search the heavy mineral database to locate observations of potential economic significance. The co-occurrence of Zn-minerals indicative of high-grade metamorphism of base metal mineralisation (e.g., gahnite (Zn-spinel), ecandrewsite (Zn-ilmenite) and zincostaurolite (Zn-aluminosilicate)) from the region surrounding Broken Hill demonstrated the utility of the method. Zn-mineral co-occurrences not associated with known mineralisation were also noted and may represent targeting opportunities. </div><div><br></div><div>Heavy mineral data from parts of Queensland are scheduled for a separate public release in December 2022 and will be presented at the conference. </div>
This Abstract was submitted/presented to the 2023 Australian Exploration Geoscience Conference 13-18 Mar ( https://2023.aegc.com.au/)
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2022-08-06T16:00:00
- Date (Publication)
- 2023-06-14T07:12:38
- Citation identifier
- Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/147120
- Cited responsible party
-
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Publisher Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Author McInnes, B.I.A.
External Contact Author de Caritat, P.
Internal Contact Author Walker, A.T.
External Contact Author Bastrakov, E.
Internal Contact
- Name
-
Australian Exploration Geoscience Conference 13-18 March 2023 Brisbane Qld
- Purpose
-
Present at Australian Exploration Geoscience Conference, Brisbane, 13-18 Mar 2023 - https://2023.aegc.com.au/
- 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 Main, P.
MEG Internal Contact
- Spatial representation type
- Topic category
-
- Geoscientific information
Extent
))
- Maintenance and update frequency
- As needed
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
- Keywords
-
-
EFTF – Exploring For The Future
-
- Keywords
-
-
Mineralogy
-
- Keywords
-
-
Exploration
-
- theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
-
-
Mineralogy and Crystallography
-
Exploration Geochemistry
-
- Keywords
-
-
Published_External
-
Resource constraints
- Title
-
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
-
CC-BY
- Edition
-
4.0
- Addressee
-
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details User Any
- Use constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
-
© Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience) 2022
Resource constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- 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
-
- OnLine resource
-
Link to Dropbox (full-paper_187.pdf)
Link to Dropbox (full-paper_187.pdf)
- Distribution format
-
- OnLine resource
-
Link to Conference Paper (Zenodo)
Link to Conference Paper (Zenodo)
- Distribution format
-
Resource lineage
- Statement
-
<div>National Geochemical Survey of Australia</div>
Metadata constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/f668eeb6-9bb7-4a2b-9eb4-d6b3ce346ff2
- Title
-
GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
- Contact
-
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Owner Main, P.
MEG Internal Contact Point of contact Main, P.
MEG 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/147120
- Date info (Creation)
- 2022-08-10T01:17:18
- Date info (Revision)
- 2022-08-10T01:17:18
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
- https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551