The presentation will introduce the basic components of the drone/UAV/RPAs, summarise the rules for operating a drone as part of a business or undertaking (including operating under a Remotely Piloted Aircraft Operators Certificate – ReOC) and present some of the science and scientists utilising RPAs for their work at Geoscience Australia and beyond. The talks will include environmental research in Antarctica, landscape analysis after large earthquakes, machine learning to spot dangerous sharks and validating satellite reflectance, all with the assistance of drones.

Characterising earthquake hazard in low seismicity regions is challenging, due to both the inherent lack of data and an incomplete theoretical understanding of the controls on earthquake occurrence away from plate boundaries. In the plate boundary paradigm, elastic rebound theory predicts that cycles of strain accumulation and release will result in regular, or quasiperiodic, recurrence of large earthquakes on individual faults. Analysis of a global compilation of long-term earthquake records shows that this largely holds in plate boundary regions, but begins to break down in intraplate and other low seismicity regions, where more irregular, or aperiodic, earthquake recurrence is observed. In this talk the Otago region of southern New Zealand is used as a case study of a low seismicity region with evidence for aperiodic earthquake recurrence. New paleoearthquake and slip rate data are used to extend the record of faulting back more than 100 ka on two faults, the Hyde and Dunstan faults. These data allow the variability of earthquake rates on these faults to be characterised, with novel Bayesian methods developed to forecast the probability of future earthquakes. Finally, the talk discusses the potential for application of these methods in the Australian context.

From being a poorly understood qualitative mapping tool, airborne electromagnetic (AEM) geophysics has become a mainstay for rapidly imaging the top few hundred metres of buried earth for a variety of geoscientific and environmental purposes. In this talk, we will detail GA’s quest to provide high quality, quantitative interpretation of AEM sounding data. Beginning with a 20-year historical perspective, we will shed light on how persistent focus on AEM technology directly led to AusAEM, the world’s largest (ongoing) AEM survey. We will then discuss how continuing focus on AEM has led to the development of an open source framework written in the Julia language, for subsurface imaging AND uncertainty quantification. This codebase is useful for geophysical methods beyond AEM, such as magnetotellurics and magnetic resonance. Finally, we will dwell on some real life examples using the new codebase and will look to the future of AEM@GA and its untapped potential.

Precise positioning based on constellations of navigation satellites brings significant economic and social benefits to Australia. Precise positioning reduces fertiliser and chemical spray waste in agriculture. It improves the efficiency of operations in large mine sites. Precise positioning improves safety in aircraft operations and can even give added freedom of movement to sight impaired people. The rationale behind the Ginan project is to develop the software and data products to allow everybody in Australia to enjoy the benefits of precise positioning through the creation of new services and products, and in doing so drive economic growth enhancing Australia's prosperity.

Antarctica conjures images of expansive white icesheets but what about the 1% not covered by ice? Though small, these exposed islands of rock are hotspots of human and animal activity. Tourism, infrastructure development, and research activities can harm these fragile environments and in the dry Antarctic climate, damage from walking and vehicle tracks can persist for years. Geoscience Australia’s landscape vulnerability project has been addressing knowledge gaps about how these environments react to disturbance by people, how they recover, and new methods to track landscape change. Through this work, GA is helping build Australia’s capability as a leader in Antarctic environmental stewardship and meet our obligations under the Antarctic Treaty System and domestic legislation.

The clean energy transition will require a vast increase in metal supply, yet discoveries of new mineral deposits are declining. Recently, several case studies have demonstrated links between electrical conductors imaged using magnetotelluric (MT) data and mineral deposits. Use of MT methods for exploration is therefore growing but the general applicability has not yet been tested. We look at spatial relationships between conductors and three deposit styles and find that volcanic hosted massive sulfide (VHMS) and copper porphyry deposits show weak to moderate correlations with conductors in the upper mantle. In contrast, orogenic gold deposits show strong correlations with mid-crustal conductors. These differences likely reflect differences in the way these deposits form, and suggest a metamorphic-fluid source for orogenic gold is significant. The resistivity signature can be preserved for hundreds of millions of years, and therefore MT can be a powerful tool for mineral exploration.

Our planet provides everything we need for our lives, including the food we eat. As the human population increases and expectations for lifestyle quality increases, so too do the pressures placed on our planet to provide that food. We therefore need to be better at producing food and understanding how that links to our scientific understanding of our planet. For National Science Week 2021, the Geoscience Australia public seminar (co-sponsored by the ACT Division of the Geological Society of Australia and the ACT Branch of the Australian Marine Sciences Association) will present four speakers to demonstrate how geoscience is integral to the provision of our food. Steve Hill – The Long View: Across many disciplines of geoscience and different spatial scales, geology, soils and even plate tectonics influence our food (and wine). Andrew Carroll – Finding Important Seabed Habitat (FISH): Did you know that seabed mapping data directly contributes $9 billion to the Australian economy each year and employs over 56,000 people? For the fishing and aquaculture sectors, seabed mapping is valued at $3 billion. However, only one quarter of Australia’s seabed is mapped! Learn how GA is addressing this challenge to support the rapid growth of Australia's Blue Economy. Claire Krause – Food at Scale: In a country as big and dynamic as Australia, producing food is no small task. Satellite imagery is being leveraged to map, monitor and understand Australia’s food production regions and to identify and manage challenges in the sector. Anna Riddell – From Paddock to Plate with Positioning: Have you ever wondered how your food arrives on your plate and the role that navigation satellites play? Positioning is becoming ubiquitous in everyday life and even has a part in enabling our food to be grown, harvested and transported.

This talk will discuss the current state of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Australia, and the role it plays for mitigating CO2 emissions. In the talk, work that has been done at Geoscience Australia over the past decade will be discussed. CCS work will also be a part of the future Exploring for the Future Program, which will also be highlighted in the talk.

Many people fondly remember assembling their first rock collection or exploding a baking soda volcano as a child. These experiences can be a great gateway into the Earth sciences, but a more tailored and modern approach will ensure future generations are geoscience-literate and eventually able to contribute to the workforce. In this presentation, we 1. Use the Geoscience Australia Education Program as a case study of changing approaches to Earth science education and engagement, particularly after the global pandemic; 2. Discuss four key challenges facing geoscience education and engagement; and 3. Apply these challenges to efforts to promote Earth science to students in later high school, including summarising some of the broader data surrounding the attitudes and priorities of this demographic. We hope that this presentation will help guide the discussion on how we can most effectively ignite the interest of the next generation in pursuing Earth Science.

The Positioning Australia program is a $225 million commitment from the Australian Government to provide 10 cm accurate positioning to all Australians. This is a significant improvement from the 5-10 m accuracy you can currently achieve using GPS enabled devices. In anticipation for the growing use and reliance on positioning technology, Geoscience Australia has led the upgrade of Australia's Geospatial Reference System (collection of datums, reference frames, models, infrastructure and standards) to ensure Australian's can maximise the benefits of precise positioning. This talk will explain why the Australian Geospatial Reference System is the foundation for the Positioning Australia program.