<div>The Heavy Mineral Map of Australia (HMMA) project1, part of Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future program, determined the abundance and distribution of heavy minerals (HMs; specific gravity >2.9 g/cm3) in 1315 floodplain sediment samples obtained from Geoscience Australia’s National Geochemical Survey of Australia (NGSA) project2. Archived NGSA samples from floodplain landforms were sub-sampled with the 75-430 µm fraction subjected to dense media separation and automated mineralogy assay using a TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analysis (TIMA) instrument at Curtin University.</div><div><br></div><div>Interpretation of the massive number of mineral observations generated during the project (~150&nbsp;million mineral observations; 166 unique mineral species) required the development of a novel workflow to allow end users to discover, visualise and interpret mineral co-occurrence and spatial relationships. Mineral Network Analysis (MNA) has been shown to be a dynamic and quantitative tool capable of revealing and visualizing complex patterns of abundance, diversity and distribution in large mineralogical data sets3. To facilitate the application of MNA for the interpretation of the HMMA dataset and efficient communication of the project results, we have developed a Mineral Network Analysis for Heavy Minerals (MNA4HM) web application utilising the ‘Shiny’ platform and R package. The MNA4HM application is used to reveal (1) the abundance and co-occurrences of heavy minerals, (2) their spatial distributions, and (3) their relations to first-order geological and geomorphological features. The latter include geological provinces, mineral deposits, topography and major river basins. Visualisation of the mineral network guides parsimonious yet meaningful mapping of minerals typomorphic of particular geological environments or mineral systems. The mineralogical dataset can be filtered or styled based on mineral attributes (e.g., simplified mineralogical classes) and properties (e.g., chemical composition).</div><div><br></div><div>In this talk we will demonstrate an optimised MNA4HM workflow (identification à mapping à interpretation) for exploration targeting selected critical minerals important for the transition to a lower carbon global economy. </div><div><br></div><div>The MNA4HM application is hosted at https://geoscienceaustralia.shinyapps.io/mna4hm and is available for use by the geological community and general public.</div> This Abstract was submitted and presented to the 2023 Goldschmidt Conference Lyon, France (https://conf.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/2023/meetingapp.cgi)

<div>Bulk quantitative mineralogy of regolith is a useful indicator of lithological precursor (protolith), degree of weathering, and soil properties affecting various potential landuse decisions. To date, no empirical national-scale maps of regolith mineralogy are available in Australia. Satellite-derived mineralogical proxy products exist, however, they require on-the-ground validation. Catchment outlet sediments collected over 80% of the continent as part of the National Geochemical Survey of Australia (NGSA) afford a unique opportunity to rapidly and cost-effectively determine regolith mineralogy using the archived sample material. This report releases mineralogical data and metadata obtained as part of a study extending a previous pilot project for such a national regolith mineralogy database and atlas.</div><div>The area chosen for this study includes the part of South Australia not inside the pilot project, which focussed on the 2020-2024 Exploring for the Future (EFTF) Darling-Curnamona-Delamerian (DCD) region of southeastern Australia, as well as the EFTF Barkly-Isa-Georgetown (BIG) region of northern Australia. The South Australian part of the study was selected because the Geological Survey of South Australia indicated interest in expanding the pilot (DCD) project to the rest of the State. The BIG region was selected because it is a ‘deep-dive’ data acquisition and analysis area within the EFTF Australian Government initiative managed at Geoscience Australia. The whole study area essentially describes a continuous north-south trans-continental transect spanning South Australia (SA), Queensland (Qld) and the Northern Territory (NT), and is herein abbreviated as SA-Qld-NT.</div><div>Two hundred and sixty four NGSA sites from the SA-Qld-NT region were prepared for X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis, which consisted of qualitative mineral identification of the bulk samples (i.e., ‘major’ minerals), qualitative clay mineral identification of the <2 µm grain-size fraction, and quantitative analysis of both major and clay minerals of the bulk sample. The identified mineral phases were quartz, kaolinite, plagioclase, K-feldspar, nosean (a sulfate bearing feldspathoid), calcite, dolomite, aragonite, ankerite, hornblende, gypsum, bassanite (a partially hydrated calcium sulfate), halite, hematite, goethite, magnetite, rutile, anatase, pyrite, interstratified or mixed-layer illite-smectite, smectite, muscovite, chlorite (group), talc, palygorskite, jarosite, alunite, and zeolite (group). Poorly diffracting material was also quantified and reported as ‘amorphous.’ Mineral identification relied on the EVA® software, whilst quantification was performed using Siroquant®. Resulting mineral abundances are reported with a Chi-squared goodness-of-fit between the actual diffractogram and a modelled diffractogram for each sample, as well as an estimated standard error (esd) measurement of uncertainty for each mineral phase quantified. Sensitivity down to 0.1 weight percent (wt%) was achieved, with any mineral detection below that threshold reported as ‘trace.’ </div><div>Although detailed interpretation of the mineralogical data is outside the remit of the present data release, preliminary observations of mineral abundance patterns suggest a strong link to geology, including proximity to fresh bedrock, weathering during sediment transport, and robust relationships between mineralogy and geochemistry. The mineralogical data generated by this study are downloadable as a .csv file from the Geoscience Australia website (https://dx.doi.org/10.26186/147990).&nbsp;</div>

Large-scale storage of commercially produced hydrogen worldwide is presently stored in salt caverns. Through the Exploring for the Future program, Geoscience Australia is identifying and mapping salt deposits in Australia that may be suitable for hydrogen storage. The Boree Salt in the Adavale Basin of central Queensland is the only known thick salt accumulation in eastern Australia, and represent potentially strategic assets for underground hydrogen storage. The Boree Salt consists predominantly of halite and can be up to 555 m thick in some wells. Geoscience Australia contracted CSIRO to conduct analyses four Boree Salt whole cores extracted from Boree 1 and Bury 1 wells. The tests were carried out to determine the seal capacity (mercury injection capillary pressure - MICP), mineralogy (X-ray diffraction - XRD), and inorganic geochemistry of the cores. The entire core sections were scanned using X-ray CT images. In addition, four plugs were taken from the cores and tested for dry bulk density, grain density, gas porosity, and permeability. Two plugs underwent ultra-low permeability tests. The MICP test suggests that the Boree Salt is a competent seal for hydrogen storage. Mineralogy testing (XRD) revealed that the Boree Salt samples primarily comprise halite (96.5%), minor anhydrite (1.32%) and dolomite (1.65%) with traces of quartz, calcite, sylvite and cristobalite. Inorganic geochemistry results show sodium (Na; 55.4% average) is the most abundant element. Further tests, such as the creep test, in-situ seal capacity test, and leaching tests, are required to determine the suitability of the Boree Salt for underground hydrogen storage. Disclaimer: Geoscience Australia has tried to make the information in this product as accurate as possible. However, it does not guarantee that the information is totally accurate or complete. Therefore, you should not solely rely on this information when making a commercial decision. This dataset is published with the permission of the CEO, Geoscience Australia.

Collection of mineral, gem, meteorite, fossil (including the Commonwealth Palaeontological Collection) and petrographic thin section specimens dating back to the early 1900s. The collection is of scientific, historic, aesthetic, and social significance. Geoscience Australia is responsible for the management and preservation of the collection, as well as facilitating access to the collection for research, and geoscience education and outreach. Over 700 specimens from the collection are displayed in our public gallery . The collection contains: • 15,000 gem, mineral and meteorite specimens from localities in Australia and across the globe. • 45,000 published palaeontological specimens contained in the Commonwealth Palaeontological Collection (CPC) mainly from Australia. • 1,000,000 unpublished fossils in a ‘Bulk Fossil’ collection. • 250,000 petrographic thin section slides. • 200 historical geoscience instruments including: cartography, geophysical, and laboratory equipment." <b>Value: </b>Specimens in the collection are derived from Geoscience Australia (GA) surveys, submissions by researchers, donations, purchases and bequests. A number of mineral specimens are held on behalf of the National Museum of Australia. <b>Scope: </b>This is a national collection that began in the early 1900s with early Commonwealth surveys collecting material across the country and British territories. The mineral specimens are mainly from across Australia, with a strong representation from major mineral deposits such as Broken Hill, and almost 40% from the rest of the world. The majority of fossils are from Australia, with a small proportion from lands historically or currently under Australian control, such as Papua New Guinea and the Australian Antarctic Territory.

During the last 10-20 years, Geological Surveys around the world have undertaken a major effort towards delivering fully harmonized and tightly quality controlled low-density multi-element soil geochemical maps and datasets of vast regions including up to whole continents. Concentrations of between 45 and 60 elements commonly have been determined in a variety of different regolith types (e.g., sediment, soil). The multi-element datasets are published as complete geochemical atlases and made available to the general public. Several other geochemical datasets covering smaller areas but generally at a higher spatial density are also available. These datasets may, however, not be found by superficial internet-based searches because the elements are not mentioned individually either in the title or in the keyword lists of the original references. This publication attempts to increase the visibility and discoverability of these fundamental background datasets covering large areas up to whole continents. <b>Citation:</b> P. de Caritat, C. Reimann, D.B. Smith, X. Wang, Chemical elements in the environment: Multi-element geochemical datasets from continental- to national-scale surveys on four continents, <i>Applied Geochemistry</i>, Volume 89, 2018, Pages 150-159, ISSN 0883-2927, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeochem.2017.11.010

Brumbys 1 was an appraisal well drilled and cored through Brumbys Fault at the CO2CRC Otway International Test Centre in 2018. The Otway Project is located in South West Victoria, on private farming property approximately 35 km southeast of Warrnambool and approximately 10 km northwest of the town of Peterborough. Total measured depth was 126.6 m (80 degrees). Sonic drilling enabled excellent core recovery and the borehole was completed as a groundwater monitoring well. Brumbys 1 cores through the upper Hesse Clay, Port Campbell Limestone and extends into the Gellibrand Marl. This dataset compiles the extensive analysis undertaken on the core. Analysis includes: Core log; Foram Analysis; Paleodepth; % Carbonate (CaCO3); X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry (XRF); Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS); X-Ray Diffraction (XRD); Grain Size; Density; Surface Area Analysis (SAA); Gamma. Samples were taken at approximately 1-2 m intervals.

<div>This look-book was developed to accompany the specimen display in the office of the Hon Madeleine King MP, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia. It contains information about each of the specimens including their name, link to resource commodities and where they were from. </div><div><br></div><div>The collection was carefully curated to highlight some of Australia’s well known resources commodities as well as the emerging commodities that will further the Australian economy and contribute to the low energy transition. The collection has been sourced from Geoscience Australia’s National Mineral and Fossil Collection. </div><div><br></div><div>The collection focuses on critical minerals, ore minerals as well as some fuel minerals. These specimens align with some of Geoscience Australia major projects including the Exploring For the Future (EFTF) program, the Trusted Environmental and Geological Information program (TEGI) as well as the Repository and the public education and outreach program.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div>

<div>Environmental DNA (eDNA), elemental and mineralogical analyses of soil have been shown to be specific to their source material, prompting consideration of the use of dust for forensic provenancing. Dust is ubiquitous in the environment and is easily transferred to items belonging to a person of interest, making dust analysis an ideal tool in forensic casework. The advent of Next Generation Sequencing technologies means that metabarcoding of eDNA can uncover microbial, fungal, and even plant genetic fingerprints in dust particles. Combining this with elemental and mineralogical compositions offers multiple, complementary lines of evidence for tracing the origin of an unknown dust sample. This is particularly pertinent when recovering dust from a person of interest to ascertain where they may have travelled. Prior to proposing dust as a forensic trace material, however, the optimum sampling protocols and detection limits need to be established to place parameters around its utility in this context. We tested several approaches to collecting dust from different materials and determined the lowest quantity of dust that could be analysed for eDNA, geochemistry and mineralogy, whilst still yielding results capable of distinguishing between sites. We found that fungal eDNA profiles could be obtained from multiple sample types and that tape lifts were the optimum collection method for discriminating between sites. We successfully recovered both fungal and bacterial eDNA profiles down to 3&nbsp;mg of dust (the lowest tested quantity) and recovered elemental and mineralogical compositions for all tested sample quantities. We show that dust can be reliably recovered from different sample types, using different sampling techniques, and that fungal, bacterial, and elemental and mineralogical profiles, can be generated from small sample quantities, highlighting the utility of dust as a forensic provenance material.</div> <b>Citation:</b> Nicole R. Foster, Belinda Martin, Jurian Hoogewerff, Michael G. Aberle, Patrice de Caritat, Paul Roffey, Robert Edwards, Arif Malik, Priscilla Thwaites, Michelle Waycott, Jennifer Young, The utility of dust for forensic intelligence: Exploring collection methods and detection limits for environmental DNA, elemental and mineralogical analyses of dust samples, <i>Forensic Science International </i>, Volume 344, 2023, 111599, ISSN 0379-0738, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2023.111599. ISSN 0379-0738,

<div>Heavy minerals (HMs) are those with a specific gravity greater than 2.9 g/cc (e.g., anatase, zircon). They have been used successfully in mineral exploration programs outside Australia for decades [1 and refs therein]. Individual HMs and combinations, or co-occurrence, of HMs can be characteristic of lithology, degree of metamorphism, alteration, weathering or even mineralisation. These are termed indicator minerals, and have been used in exploration for gold, diamonds, mineral sands, nickel-copper, platinum group elements, volcanogenic massive sulfides, non-sulfide zinc, porphyry copper-molybdenum, uranium, tin-tungsten, and rare earth elements mineralization. Although there are proprietary HM sample assets held by industry in Australia, no extensive public-domain dataset of the natural distribution of HMs across the continent currently exists.</div><div> We describe a vision for a national-scale heavy mineral (HM) map generated through automated mineralogical identification and quantification of HMs contained in floodplain sediments from large catchments covering most of Australia [1]. These samples were collected as part of the National Geochemical Survey of Australia (NGSA; www.ga.gov.au/ngsa) and are archived in Geoscience Australia’s rock store. The composition of the sediments can be assumed to reflect the dominant rock and soil types within each catchment (and potentially those upstream), with the generally resistant HMs largely preserving the mineralogical fingerprint of their host protoliths through the weathering-transport-deposition cycle. </div><div> Underpinning this vision is a pilot project, focusing on a subset of NGSA to demonstrate the feasibility of the larger, national-scale project. Ten NGSA sediment samples were selected and both bulk and HM fractions were analysed for quantitative mineralogy using a Tescan® Integrated Mineral Analyzer (TIMA) at the John de Laeter Centre, Curtin University (Figure 1). Given the large and complex nature of the resultant HM dataset, we built a bespoke, cloud-based mineral network analysis (MNA) tool to visualise, explore and discover relationships between HMs, as well as between them and geological setting or mineral deposits. The pilot project affirmed our expectations that a rich and diverse mineralogical ecosystem will be revealed by expanding HM mapping to the continental scale. </div><div> A first partial data release in 2022 was the first milestone of the Heavy Mineral Map of Australia (HMMA) project. The area concerned is the Darling-Curnamona-Delamerian region of southeastern Australia, where the richly endowed Broken Hill mineral province lies. Here, we identified over 140 heavy minerals from 29 million individual mineral observations in 223 sediment samples. Using the MNA tool, one can quickly identify interesting base metal mineral associations and their spatial distributions (Figure 2).</div><div> We envisage that the Heavy Mineral Map of Australia and the MNA tool will contribute significantly to mineral prospectivity analysis and modelling in Australia, particularly for technology critical elements and their host minerals, which are central to the global economy transitioning to a more sustainable, decarbonised paradigm.</div><div><br></div>Figure 1. Distribution map of ten selected heavy minerals in the heavy mineral fractions of the ten NGSA pilot samples (pie charts), overlain on Australia’s geological regions (variable colors) [2]). Map projection: Albers equal area.</div><div><br></div><div>Figure 2. Graphical user interface for the Geoscience Australia MNA cloud-based visualization tool for the DCD project (https://geoscienceaustralia.shinyapps.io/HMMA-MNA/) showing the network for Zn minerals with the gahnite subnetwork highlighted (left) and the map of gahnite distribution (right).</div><div> <strong>References</strong></div><div>[1] Caritat et al., 2022, Minerals, 12(8), 961. https://doi.org/10.3390/min12080961 </div><div>[2] Blake &amp; Kilgour, 1998, Geosci Aust. https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/32366 </div><div><br></div>This Abstract was submitted/presented to the 2022 Mineral Prospectivity and Exploration Targeting (MinProXT 2022) webinar, Freiburg, Germany, 01 - 03 November (www.minproxt.com)

<div>The ubiquitous nature of dust, along with localised chemical and biological signatures, makes it an ideal medium for provenance determination in a forensic context. Metabarcoding of dust can yield biological communities unique to the site of interest, similarly, geochemical and mineralogical analyses can uncover elements and minerals within dust than can be matched to a geographic location. Combining these analyses presents multiple lines of evidence as to the origin of collected dust samples. In this work, we investigated whether the time an item spent at a site collecting dust influenced the ability to assign provenance. We then integrated dust metabarcoding of bacterial and fungal communities into a framework amenable to forensic casework, (i.e., using calibrated log-likelihood ratios to predict the origin of dust samples) and assessed whether current soil metabarcoding databases could be utilised to predict dust origin. Furthermore, we tested whether both metabarcoding and geochemical/mineralogical analyses could be conducted on a single sample for situations where sampling is limited. We found both analyses could generate results capable of separating sites from a single swabbed sample and that the duration of time to accumulate dust did not impact site separation. We did find significant variation within sites at different sampling time periods, showing that bacterial and fungal community profiles vary over time and space – but not to the extent that they are non-discriminatory. We successfully modelled soil and dust samples for both bacterial and fungal diversity, developing calibrated log-likelihood ratio plots and used these to predict provenance for dust samples. We found that the temporal variation in community composition influenced our ability to predict dust provenance and recommend reference samples be collected as close to the sampling time as possible. Thus, our framework showed soil metabarcoding databases are capable of being used to predict dust provenance but the temporal variation in metabarcoded communities will need to be addressed to improve provenance estimates.&nbsp;</div> <b>Citation:</b> Nicole R. Foster, Duncan Taylor, Jurian Hoogewerff, Michael G. Aberle, Patrice de Caritat, Paul Roffey, Robert Edwards, Arif Malik, Michelle Waycott and Jennifer M. Young, The secret hidden in dust: Uncovering the potential to use biological and chemical properties of the airborne soil fraction to assign provenance and integrating this into forensic casework, <i>Forensic Science International: Genetics,</i> (2023) doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsigen.2023.102931