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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.&nbsp;</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

N
S
E
W


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

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) 2022

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
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
Website

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

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

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/f668eeb6-9bb7-4a2b-9eb4-d6b3ce346ff2

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/accessDenied.jsp/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/f668eeb6-9bb7-4a2b-9eb4-d6b3ce346ff2

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

 
 

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
Exploration Geochemistry Mineralogy and Crystallography

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