Project description
Geoscience Australia's Continental Geophysics project is an active concentration of specialists engaged in the acquisition, processing, archiving, enhancement, presentation and interpretation in the fields of airborne geophysics and gravity. They also are involved in the development of new computational methods which can be applied to geophysical data. The project's products and services are used by:
- other projects in Geoscience Australia engaged in studies of mineral systems, geological mapping, mineral province studies, sedimentary basin studies and definition of the geoid as well as land use and environmental projects
- exploration companies
- organisations involved in the identification of areas at risk of salinity and its management
- agricultural and environmental organisations
- organisations developing infrastructure projects
- educational and research institutions
- other government departments.
Geoscience Australia is the custodian of the most comprehensive publicly available Australian airborne magnetic, gamma-ray, elevation model and electromagnetic database and gravity database. The airborne geophysics database contains approximately 28 million line kilometres of data, which, at current prices, would cost approximately $168 million to acquire. The gravity database contains more than 1.7 million stations gathered during more than 1700 surveys. All the products and research results from the Continential Geophysics project are publicly available for use by other government agencies, industry and research and educational institutions. Data from the project is available also for inter-governmental and private sector cooperative acquisition, interpretation, research and training projects.
Project outcome
- New insights into Australia's onshore energy and mineral potential, which contribute significantly to the Onshore Energy Security Program (OESP)
- Enhanced exploration strategies, promotion of mineral exploration opportunities and improved environmental management in Australia
Project outputs 2009-10
- Updates to National Geophysical Databases
- New OESP geophysical datasets
- Updates to the Australian Fundamental Gravity Network (AFGN)
- National Geoscience Agreement (NGA) geophysical data acquisition project management
- Reports on computational methods and geophysical inversion processing
- Development of a Rock Properties Database
Databases
- Australian National Gravity Database
- Airborne Surveys Database - this database of specifications of the Australian and State Government airborne geophysical surveys shows a window open to query, another showing results of any query and a third showing the survey boundaries on a map of Australia
- Geophysical Archive Data Delivery System (GADDS) - this web-based application delivers data from the airborne geophysics and gravity databases and allows customers to select a specific area of interest and have that data delivered free online within a short time frame
- Magnetic Anomaly Grid Database of Australia (MAGDA) - this database, which underpins the production of the Magnetic Anomaly Map of Australia, contains matched total magnetic intensity grid data for mostly publicly available airborne surveys over the Australian continent
Reports
Standards
Informal standards
Reference and discussion papers
Data (digital downloads)
Maps
