New SHRIMP U/Pb zircon ages of 472.2 ± 5.8 Ma and 470.4 ± 6.1 Ma are presented for the age of peak metamorphism of Barrovian migmatite units. Published U/Pb emplacement ages for Grampianage igneous units of Scotland and Ireland vary between c. 473.5 and c. 470 Ma. Magmatic advection provided significant heat for the Barrovian metamorphism, and the new U/Pb ages are consistent with attainment of peak Barrovian metamorphic temperatures during Grampian magmatism. U/Pb-calibrated 40Ar/39Ar ages for white mica from the Barrovian metamorphic series vary systematically, between c. 465 Ma for the biotite zone and c. 461 Ma for the sillimanite zone. Microstructural work on the timing of peak metamorphism has shown that metamorphism occurred progressively later with increasing peak-metamorphic grade. Younging metamorphic age with increasing metamorphic grade across the Barrovian metamorphic series requires that the sequence was cooled in the lower-grade regions while heating persisted in the high-grade regions. This thermal scenario is well explained by the presence of a large-scale extensional detachment that influenced the thermal regime by actively cooling units from above while metamorphic heating continued below the sequence. The spatio-temporal thermal pattern recorded by the Barrovian metamorphic series is consistent with regional metamorphism during crustal extension.

The surface sedimentary record from six sediment cores collected from beneath the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, provides a unique view of the sedimentary and oceanographic processes in this sub-ice shelf setting. The composition and age of the surface sediments indicate spatial variations in ice shelf cavity-ocean interaction, which are consistent with patterns of ocean inflow and outflow modelled and observed beneath the ice shelf. Sediments within 100 km of the ice shelf front (site AM01b) show the greatest open ocean influence with a young surface age and the highest total diatom abundance, compared to older ages and lower diatom abundances at sites deeper in the cavity (AM03 to AM06). The variable marine influence between sites determines the nature of benthic communities, with seabed imagery indicating the existence of sessile suspension feeders in areas of strong marine inflow (site AM01b), while grazers, deposit feeders and a few suspension feeders occur at sites more distal from the shelf calving front where the food supply is lower (sites AM03 and AM04). Understanding the sedimentary and oceanographic processes within the sub-ice shelf environment allows better constraint of interpretations of down core sediment records, an improved understanding of the nature of biological communities in sub-ice shelf environments, and a baseline for determining the sensitivity of the system to any future changes in ocean dynamics.

GeoSciML v3 (www.geosciml.org) and EarthResourceML v2 (www.earthresourceml.org) are the latest releases of geoscience data transfer standards from the IUGS-CGI Interoperability Working Group (IWG). The data standards each comprise a UML model and complex features GML schemas, extending the spatial standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), including GML v3.2, O&M v2, and SWE Common v2. Future development of GeoSciML and EarthResourceML will occur under a collaborative IUGS-OGC arrangement. GeoSciML covers a wide range of geological data, including geological units, structures, earth materials, boreholes, geomorphology, petrophysical properties, and sampling and analytical metadata. The model was refactored from a single application schema in version 2 into a number of smaller, more manageable schemas in version 3. EarthResourceML covers solid earth resources (mineral occurrences, resources and reserves) and their exploitation (mines and mining activities). The model has been extended to accommodate the requirements of the EU INSPIRE data sharing initiative, seeing the addition of mineral exploration activity and environmental aspects (ie, mining waste) to the model. GeoSciML-Portrayal is a simple-features GML application schema based on a simplified core of GeoSciML. It supports presentation of geological map units, contacts, and faults in Web Map Services, and provides a link between simple-feature data delivery and more complex GeoSciML WFS services. The schema establishes naming conventions for fields commonly used to symbolize geological maps to enable visual harmonization of map services. The IWG have established a vocabulary service at http://resource.geosciml.org, serving geoscience vocabularies in RDF-SKOS format. Vocabularies are not included in GeoSciML and EarthResourceML, but the models recommend a standard pattern to reference controlled vocabularies using HTTP-URI links. GeoSciML and EarthResourceML have been adopted or recommended as the data exchange standards in key international interoperability initiatives, including OneGeology, the INSPIRE project, the US Geoscience Information Network, and the Australia/NZ Government Geoscience Information Committee.

An orogenic cycle typically follows a sequence of events or stages. These are basin formation and magmatism during extension, inversion and crustal thickening during contractional orogenesis, and finally extensional collapse of the orogen. The Archaean granite-greenstone terranes of the Eastern Yilgarn Craton (EYC) record a major deviation in this sequence of events. Within the overall contractional stage, the EYC underwent a lithospheric-scale extensional event between 2665 Ma and 2655 Ma, resulting in changes to the entire orogenic system. These changes associated with regional extension include: the crustal architecture; greenstone stratigraphy; granite magmatism; thermo-barometry (PTt paths); and structure. Synchronous with these changes was the deposition of the first significant gold, and it is likely that the intra-orogenic extensional event was one of the critical factors in the region's world-class gold endowment.

This presentation will provide an overview of some of the work currently being undertaken at Geoscience Australia GA) as part of the National Coastal Vulnerability Assessment (NCVA), funded by the Department of Climate Change (DCC). The presentation will summarise the methodology applied, and highlight the issues, including the limitations and data gaps.

North Queensland Geodynamic and Mineral System Synthesis

Geoscience Australia has developed two free and open source models; the Earthquake Risk Model (EQRM) and in collaboration with the Australian National University, the hydrodynamic model, ANUGA. Both models estimate damage and loss to residential communities from earthquake and a range of hydrodynamic hazards, such as flood and tsunami. Both models have been developed in python using scientific and GIS packages, such as Shapely, Numeric and SciPy. Both rely on an underlying geospatial data-structure to model natural hazards. EQRM estimates the ground motion and damage at a set of locations for a suite of earthquakes, representing all plausible events. Modelling the earthquake risk involves estimating the probability of losses due to building damage from earthquakes. EQRM development began in 2001 and was released as open source software on Sourceforge in 2007. ANUGA solves the conservative form of the shallow water wave equation, using a finite-volume method. This method allows the study area to be represented by an unstructured mesh with variable resolution to suit the particular problem. Development of ANUGA began in 2004 and it was released as open source in 2006 on Sourceforge. It is now being used by academic, government and commercial organisations world wide to assess tsunami and flood inundation. This presentation will outline key lessons learnt in releasing these models as free and open-source software. Examples of where these models have been used to support the government's and the community's understanding of the economic impact of earthquakes and hydrodynamic hazards will be briefly described before the current development activities outlined.

Large areas of prospective North and North-East Queensland have been surveyed by airborne hyperspectral sensor, HyMap, and airborne geophysics as part of the 'Smart' exploration initiative by the Geological Survey of Queensland. In particular, 25000 km2 of hyperspectral mineral and compositional map products, at 4.5 m spatial resolution, have been generated and made available via the internet. In addition, more than 130 ASTER scenes were processed and merged to produce broad scale mapping of mineral groups (Thomas et al, 2008). Province-scale, accurate maps of mineral abundances and minerals chemistries were generated for North Queensland as a result of a 2 year project starting in July 2006 which involved CSIRO Exploration and Mining, the Geological Survey of Queensland (GSQ), Geoscience Australia, James Cook University, and Curtin University. Airborne radiometric data acquired over the same North Queensland Mt Isa - Cloncurry areas as the hyperspectral surveys, had been acquired at flight line spacing of 200 metre. Such geophysical radiometric data provides a useful opportunity to compare the mineral mapping potential of both techniques, for a wide range of geological and vegetated environments. In this study, examples are described of soil mapping within the Tick Hill area, and geological / exploration mapping within the Mt Henry and Suicide Ridge prospects of North Queensland.

A key component of Geoscience Australia's marine program involves developing products that contain spatial information about the seabed for Australia's marine jurisdiction. This spatial information is derived from sparse or unevenly distributed samples collected over a number of years using many different sampling methods. Spatial interpolation methods are used for generating spatially continuous information from the point samples. These methods are, however, often data- or even variable- specific and it is difficult to select an appropriate method for any given dataset. Machine learning methods, like random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM), have proven to be among the most accurate methods in disciplines such as bioinformatics and terrestrial ecology. However, they have been rarely previously applied to the spatial interpolation of environmental variables using point samples. To improve the accuracy of spatial interpolations to better represent the seabed environment for a variety of applications, including prediction of biodiversity and surrogacy research, Geoscience Australia has conducted two simulation experiments to compare the performance of 14 mathematical and statistical methods to predict seabed mud content for three regions (i.e., Southwest, North, Northeast) of Australia's marine jurisdiction Since 2008. This study confirms the effectiveness of applying machine learning methods to spatial data interpolation, especially in combination with OK or IDS, and also confirms the effectiveness of averaging the predictions of these combined methods. Moreover, an alternative source of methods for spatial interpolation of both marine and terrestrial environmental properties using point survey samples has been identified, with associated improvements in accuracy over commonly used methods.

In 1994, the United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and the Pacific resolved to establish a Permanent Committee comprising of national surveying and mapping agencies to address the concept of establishing a common geographic information infrastructure for the region. This resolution subsequently led to the establishment of the Permanent Committee for GIS Infrastructure for the Asia and Pacific (PCGIAP). One of the goals of the PCGIAP was to establish and maintain a precise understanding of the relationship between permanent geodetic stations across the region. To this end, campaign-style geodetic-GPS observations, coordinated by Geoscience Australia, have been undertaken throughout the region since 1997. In this presentation, we discuss the development of an Asia Pacific regional reference frame based on the PCGIAP GPS campaign data, which now includes data from 417 non-IGS GPS stations and provides long term crustal deformation estimates for over 200 GPS stations throughout the region. We overview and evaluate: our combination strategy with particular emphasis on the alignment of the solution onto the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF); the sensitivity of the solution to reference frame site selection; the treatment of regional co-seismic and post-seismic deformation; and the Asia-Pacific contribution to the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) Working Group on "Regional Dense Velocity Fields". The level of consistency of the coordinate estimates with respect to ITRF2005 is 6, 5, 15 mm, in the east, north and up components, respectively, while the velocity estimates are consistent at 2, 2, 6 mm/yr in the east, north and up components, respectively.