Australia's future mineral wealth will come increasingly from buried ore deposits. The successful discovery of these deposits will require a paradigm shift in the way mineral exploration is undertaken and supported in Australia. This presentation examines the implications of the paradigm shift for the way industry conducts its exploration, for the way service providers support the industry, for the way government agencies conduct their precompetitive programmes, and for the way universities teach the geosciences and undertake geoscience research.
Many serious challenges facing Australia (eg. homeland security, emergency management, natural resource management, public health, and animal and plant health) require a national response. No single agency or jurisdiction has all the answers ??? putting a premium on inter-agency and inter-governmental cooperation. We need to pool our knowledge and make maximum use of our extensive but widely dispersed data and information assets.
Mineral discovery rates are falling and costs of discoveries increasing. There is a need to develop a paradigm shift from locating ore bodies near the Earth's surface to finding them at depths of 500 metres or more. To do this, we will need to use strong inference science to develop predictive geological models to help discover giant ore bodies at depth. The likely effect of these developments on companies, universities, geological surveys and research organisations are reviewed. Two examples are given to illustrate the types of work needed. Firstly the McArthur Basin, where a seismic survey caused a radical rethink of basin development and secondly the Roxby Downs area where Geoscience Australia produced an inverted gravity and magnetic model suggesting additional targets for Olympic Dam style mineralisation.
