Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services offer a cost efficient technology that permits transfer of standardised data from distributed sources, removing the need for data to be regularly uploaded to a centralised database. When combined with community defined exchange standards, the OGC services offer a chance to access the latest data from the originating agency and return the data in a consistent format. Interchange and mark-up languages such as the Geography Markup Language (GML) provide standard structures for transferring geospatial information over the web. The IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI) has an on-going collaborative project to develop a data model and exchange language based on GML for geological map and borehole data, the GeoScience Mark-up Language (GeoSciML). The Australian Government Geoscience Information Committee (GGIC) has used the GeoSciML model as a basis to cover mineral resources (EarthResourceML), and the Canadian Groundwater Information Network (GIN) has extended GeoSciML into the groundwater domain (GWML). The focus of these activities is to develop geoscience community schema that use globally accepted geospatial web service data exchange standards.

After CO2 is injected into the saline aquifer, the formation water inside the porous media becomes more acidic. This will significantly affect the original chemical equilibrium underground, and induce or speed up various processes of dissolution and precipitation depending on the reservoir pressure, temperature and salinity of formation water. The Early Cretaceous Gage Sandstone has been identified as a potential reservoir unit suitable for large-scale CO2 storage in the offshore southern Perth Basin. This study assesses the contribution of mineralisation trapping to CO2 storage capacity of the Gage Sandstone through a comprehensive geochemical modelling.

As part of initiatives by the Australian and Queensland Governments to support energy security and mineral exploration, a deep seismic reflection survey was conducted in 2007 to establish the architecture and geodynamic framework of north Queensland. With additional support from AuScope, nearly 1400 km of seismic data were acquired along four lines, extending from near Cloncurry in the west to almost the Queensland coast. Important results based on the interpretation of the deep seismic data include: (1) A major, west-dipping, Paleo-proterozoic (or older) crustal boundary, which we interpret as a suture, separates relatively homogenous, thick crust of the Mt Isa Province from thinner, two layered crust to the east. This boundary is also imaged by magnetotelluric data and 3D inversion of aeromagnetic and gravity data. (2) East of the Mt Isa Province the lower crust is highly reflective and has been subdivided into three mappable seismic provinces (Numil, Abingdon and Agwamin) which are not exposed at the surface. Nd model ages from granites sampled at the surface above the western Numil and central Abingdon Seismic Provinces have very similar Nd model ages, suggesting that both provinces may have had a very similar geological history. By contrast, granites sampled above the eastern Agwamin Seismic Province have much younger Nd model ages, implying a significantly younger component in the lower crust; we consider that the Agwamin Seismic Province contains a strong Grenvillean-age component.

Like many of the basins along Australia's eastern seaboard, there is currently only a limited understanding of the geothermal energy potential of the New South Wales extent of the Clarence-Moreton Basin. To date, no study has examined the existing geological information available to produce an estimate of subsurface temperatures throughout the region. Forward modelling of basin structure using its expected thermal properties is the process generally used in geothermal studies to estimate temperatures at depth in the Earth's crust. The process has seen increasing use in complex three-dimensional (3D) models, including in areas of sparse data. The overall uncertainties of 3D models, including the influence of the broad assumptions required to undertake them, are generally only poorly examined by their authors and sometimes completely ignored. New methods are presented in this study which will allow estimates and uncertainties to be addressed in a quantitative and justifiable way. Specifically, this study applies Monte Carlo Analysis to constrain uncertainties through random sampling of statistically congruent populations. Particular focus has been placed on the uncertainty in assigning thermal conductivity values to complex and spatially extensive geological formations using only limited data. As a case study these new methods are then applied to the New South Wales extent of the Clarence-Moreton Basin. The geological structure of the basin has been modelled using data from existing petroleum drill holes, surface mapping and information derived from previous studies. A range of possible lithological compositions was determined for each of the major geological layers through application of compositional data analysis. In turn, a range of possible thermal conductivity values was determined for the major lithology groups using rock samples held by the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI). These two populations of values were then randomly sampled to establish 120 different forward models, the results of which have been interpreted to present the best estimate of expected subsurface temperatures, and their uncertainties. These results suggest that the Clarence-Moreton Basin has a moderate geothermal energy potential within an economic drilling depth. This potential however, displays significant variability between different modelling runs, which is likely due to the limited data available for the region. While further work could improve these methods, it can be seen from this study that uncertainties can provide a means by which to add confidence to results, rather than undermine it.

An assumption of probabilistic seismic hazard assessment is that within each source zone the random earthquakes of the past are considered a good predictor of future seismicity. Random earthquakes suggest a Poisson process. If the source zone does not follow a Poisson process then the resulting PSHA might not be valid. The tectonics of a region will effect its spatial distributions. Earthquakes occurring on a single fault, or uniformly distributed, or clustered or random will each have a distinctive spatial distribution. Here we describe a method for both identifying and delineating earthquake clusters and then characterising them. We divide the region into N cells and by counting the number of earthquakes in each cell we obtain a distribution of the number of cells versus the number of earthquakes per cell. This can then be compared to the theoretical Poisson distribution. Areas which deviate from the theoretical Poisson distribution, can then be delineated. This suggests a statistically robust method for determining source zones. Preliminary results suggest that areas of clustering (eg. SWSZ) can also be modelled as a Poisson process which differs from the larger regional Poisson process. The effect of aftershocks and swarms are also investigated.

CONTROL ID: 1813538 TITLE: 'Big Data' can make a big difference: Applying Big Data to National Scale Change Analyses AUTHORS (FIRST NAME, LAST NAME): Norman Roland Mueller1, Steven Curnow1, Rachel Melrose1, Matthew Brian John Purss1, Adam Lewis1 INSTITUTIONS (ALL): 1. Geoscience Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australia. ABSTRACT BODY: The traditional method of change detection in remote sensing is based on acquiring a pair of images and conducting a set of analyses to determine what is different between them. The end result is a single change analysis for a single time period. While this may be repeated several times, it is generally a time consuming, often manual process providing a series of snapshots of change. As datasets become larger, and time series analyses become more sophisticated, these traditional methods of analysis are unviable. The Geoscience Australia 'Data Cube' provides a 25-year time series of all Landsat-5 and Landsat-7 data for the entire Australian continent. Each image is orthorectified to a standard set of pixel locations and is fully calibrated to a measure of surface reflectance (the 25m Australian Reflectance Grid [ARG25]). These surface reflectance measurements are directly comparable, between different scenes, and regardless of whether they are sourced from the Landsat-5 TM instrument or the Landsat-7 ETM+. The advantage of the Data Cube environment lies in the ability to apply an algorithm to every pixel across Australia (some 1013 pixels) in a consistent way, enabling change analysis for every acquired observation. This provides a framework to analyse change through time on a scene to scene basis, and across national-scale areas for the entire duration of the archive. Two examples of applications of the Data Cube are described here: surface water extent mapping across Australia; and vegetation condition mapping across the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's largest river system.. Ongoing water mapping and vegetation condition mapping is required by the Australian government to produce information products for a range of requirements including ecological monitoring and emergency management risk planning. With a 25 year archive of Landsat-5 and Landsat-7 imagery hosted on an efficient High Performance Computing (HPC) environment, high speed analyses of long time series for water and vegetation condition are now viable. www.ga.gov.au KEYWORDS: 1906 INFORMATICS Computational models, algorithms, 1988 INFORMATICS Temporal analysis and representation, 1980 INFORMATICS Spatial analysis and representation. (No Image Selected) (No Table Selected) Additional Details Previously Presented Material: Contact Details CONTACT (NAME ONLY): Norman Mueller CONTACT (E-MAIL ONLY): norman.mueller@ga.gov.au TITLE OF TEAM:

Australia has a rich uranium endowment. Amongst other favourable geological conditions for the formation of uranium deposits, such as the presence of intracratonic sedimentary basins, Australia is host to widespread uranium-rich felsic igneous rocks spanning a wide range of geological time. Many known uranium deposits have an empirical spatial relationship with such rocks. While formation of some mineral systems is closely associated with the emplacement of uranium-rich felsic magmas (e.g., the super-giant Olympic Dam deposit), most other systems have resulted from subsequent low temperature processes occurring in spatial proximity to these rocks. Approximately 91% of Australia's initial in-ground resources of uranium occur in two main types of deposits: iron-oxide breccia complex deposits (~ 75%) and unconformity-related deposits (~ 16%). Other significant resources are associated with sandstone- (~ 5%) and calcrete-hosted (~ 1%) deposits. By comparison, uranium deposits associated with orthomagmatic and magmatic-hydrothermal uranium systems are rare. Given the paucity of modern exploration and the favourable geological conditions with Australia, there remains significant potential for undiscovered uranium deposits. This paper discusses mineral potential of magmatic- and basin-related uranium systems.

The frontier deepwater Otway and Sorell basins lie offshore of south-western Victoria and western Tasmania at the eastern end of Australia's Southern Rift System. The basins developed during rifting and continental separation between Australia and Antarctica from the Cretaceous to Cenozoic. The complex structural and depositional history of the basins reflects their location in the transition from an orthogonal-obliquely rifted continental margin (western-central Otway Basin) to a transform continental margin (southern Sorell Basin). Despite good 2D seismic data coverage, these basins remain relatively untested and their prospectivity poorly understood. The deepwater (>500 m) section of the Otway Basin has been tested by two wells, of which Somerset 1 recorded minor gas shows. Three wells have been drilled in the Sorell Basin, where minor oil shows were recorded near the base of Cape Sorell 1. As part of the Federal Government funded Offshore Energy Security Program, Geoscience Australia has acquired new aeromagnetic data and utilised open file seismic datasets to undertake an integrated regional study of the deepwater Otway and Sorell basins. Structural interpretation of the new aeromagnetic data and potential field modelling provide new insights into the basement architecture and tectonic history, and highlights the role of pre-existing structural fabric in controlling the evolution of the basins. Regional scale mapping of key sequence stratigraphic surfaces across the basins, integration of the regional structural analysis, and petroleum systems modelling have resulted in a clearer understanding of the tectonostratigraphic evolution and petroleum prospectivity of this complex basin system.

Exploration models for Rot Rock geothermal energy plays in Australia are based primarily on high-heat producing granites (HHPG) in combination with overlying low-conductivity sedimentary rocks providing the insulator necessary to accumulate elevated temperatures at unusually shallow (therefore accessible) depths. Unknowns in this style of geothermal play include the composition and geometry of the HHPG and thermal properties, and the thickness of the overlying sediments. A series of 3D geological models have been constructed to investigate the range of geometries and compositions that may give rise to prospective Hot Rock geothermal energy plays. A 3D geological map of the Cooper Basin region which contains known HHPG beneath thick sedimentary sequences, has been constructed from gravity inversions and constrained by geological data. The inversion models delineate regions of low density within the basement that are inferred to be granitic bodies. Thermal forward modelling was carried out by incorporating measured and estimated thermal properties to the mapped lithologies. An enhancement of the GeoModeller software is to allow the input thermal properties to be specified as distribution functions. Multiple thermal simulations using Monte-Carlo methods would be carried out from the supplied distributions. Statistical methods will be used to yield the probability estimates of the in-situ heat resource, reducing the risk of exploring for heat. The two thermal modelling techniques can be used as a predictive tool in regions where little or no temperature and geological data are available.

Magnetotelluric data were acquired for Geoscience Australia by contract along the north-south 08GA-C1-Curnamona seismic traverse to the east of Lake Frome from November 2008 to January 2009 as part of the Australian Government's energy security initiative. 25 sites were spaced an average of 10 km apart, and five-component broadband data were recorded with a frequency bandwidth of 0.001 Hz to 250 Hz and dipole lengths of 100 m. Apparent resistivity and phase plots are presented, along with dimensional analyses of the data based on rotational invariants, the representation of the data by the phase tensor, and Parkinson arrows. These analyses provide insight into the complexity of the Earth conductivity giving rise to the MT responses and are a useful precursor to modelling.