A five-year Federal Government survey which will provide information to assess the risk of earthquakes in Adelaide and the Flinders Ranges was launched today by Alexander Downer, Federal Member for the South Australian electorate of Mayo and Minister for Foreign Affairs.
As part of the survey, scientists from Geoscience Australia will be using satellite technology to measure barely detectable rock movement in the Flinders Ranges. This information will help to improve earthquake risk assessment for the Flinders Ranges and Adelaide, which has the highest earthquake risk of all Australian capital cities.
"This collaborative project will enable scientists to measure how much the rocks in the Mt Lofty and Flinders Ranges area are moving today. This movement is so small that we need to use satellite technology to detect it," said Mr Downer.
"Using the Global Positioning System, scientists will place some 48 Global Positioning Systems (GPS) units at points across the Flinders Ranges, Mount Lofty Ranges and the eastern Eyre Peninsula. By returning to these points and re-locating them using GPS every few years, they will be able to detect any slight movement that has happened over that period, even if it is only a millimetre."
"Scientists will combine information from this project with information from previous earthquakes in the area to improve our assessment of the risk of earthquakes in the Mt Lofty and Flinders Ranges," said Mr Downer.
The project is a collaborative effort between Geoscience Australia, Primary Industries and Resources South Australia (PIRSA), the South Australian Department of Administrative and Information Services (DAIS), the Australian National University (ANU), and the New Zealand Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (IGNS).
The first geological expedition to the south-eastern Gulf of Carpentaria to gather information about its evolution was launched on 6 May from Port Cairns by Warren Entsch, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources.
A team of 12 scientists from Geoscience Australia will collect marine samples and underwater footage during the expedition to solve the riddle of the shifting sands in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
"The area is rich in biological diversity with sea grass beds providing habitats for marine species such as dugongs, fringe reef corals and sea turtles. They also support the local fisheries including a thriving prawn industry", said Warren Entsch, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, as he launched the expedition from Port Cairns.
"The majority of Australia's river-borne sediments - made up of sand, rocks and silt - never make it to the ocean. Instead they travel from rivers to coastal estuaries, where they are trapped as part of underlying sediments", said Dr Peter Harris, expedition Chief Scientist from Geoscience Australia.
"The Gulf of Carpentaria is Australia's largest exception with over half the sediments on its sea-floor originating from rivers in adjacent catchments. This unique area gives us the perfect opportunity to study the effects of inland sediments in marine environments", added Dr Harris.
"This is extremely important because of the Gulf's marine resources and potential environmental impacts from commercial activities including proposed mining in the adjacent river catchments, the fishing industry, shipping and dredging", said Warren Entsch.
The Gulf of Carpentaria falls within Australia's next regional marine planning area which has been approved by the National Ocean's Ministerial Board of which Ian Macfarlane, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, is a member.
Read more in the Media Release
Seven more digital data products are now available free online from Geoscience Australia. They include historical data files such as National Public and Aboriginal Lands Pre-1998, Australian Land Tenure 1993, Vegetation - Pre-European Settlement (1788), Vegetation - Post-European Settlement (1988), as well as ATSIC Boundaries and Australia's River Basins data. There is also a new Commonwealth Fisheries 2003 product. The Commonwealth Electoral Boundaries data will soon be available from the Australian Electoral Commission site.
These products add to the growing list of digital datasets provided free online by Geoscience Australia since September 2001 when the Federal Government released its Spatial Data Access and Pricing Policy.
The first products made available under this policy included topographic data, satellite imagery and thematic data such as Australian Surface Water Management Areas and Australian Maritime Boundary Information System (AMBIS). Thousands of users have taken advantage of the opportunity to use the free data, with very limited licensing restrictions.
Accessing the data requires registration followed by a simple downloading procedure. Data is available in three different application formats: ArcView Shapefile, ArcInfo Export and MapInfo Mid/Mif, and comes with relevant documentation to allow immediate use of the data in your GIS application.
Petroleum exploration in Australia received a major boost with the injection of an extra $61 million into Geoscience Australia as part of the Federal Government's commitment to encouraging exploration in Australia's offshore waters.
The Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, Ian Macfarlane, announced the new funding which will be used over four years to provide vital geological and seismic data to companies considering oil exploration in Australian waters.
"Without major new discoveries, Australia’s oil production is expected to fall by 40 per cent over the next ten years. This additional funding is an investment in maintaining an acceptable degree of national energy self-sufficiency," said Mr Macfarlane.
90 per cent of all oil exploration success in Australia since World War 2 has been directly underpinned by geoscience information and advice given by Geoscience Australia.
"The scientific data gathered and interpreted through the Geoscience Australia oil program is vital to attracting new private sector exploration investment. Geoscience Australia is the first stop for potential investors in our long-term energy security," he said.
The $61 million funding will be divided into two pools.
The first, $36 million, will be new core funding for Geoscience Australia's oil program. Importantly, this funding will be on-going. This enables the Government to provide basic geological data concerning Australia's offshore petroleum reserves free of charge – further proof of the importance the Government places on attracting investment.
"The Howard Government's commitment to unlocking this resource potential is on the table. We've responded to the call to maintain this free service. It's now up to the exploration industry to respond with similar vigour," said Mr Macfarlane.
"The industry talks of the need to find a new Bass Strait. The Howard Government is providing substantial support, free-of-charge, to help them in the search," he said.
The balance of $25 million will fund Geoscience Australia's new Seismic Data Acquisition program for remote, untested frontier areas.
It will also enable the copying of more than half a million data tapes held by Geoscience Australia onto modern storage media. Preservation is necessary to ensure valuable seismic data is not lost because of the deterioration of old technology tapes.
Australia's very own mysterious underwater Grand Canyons - the Murray Canyons - were revealed for the first time in an animated 3D fly-through at a joint launch by Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, Warren Entsch and Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Dr David Kemp.
The fly-through provides the first complete picture of the spectacular underwater topography of the massive Murray Canyons, which are deeper than America's Grand Canyon and more than twice the height of Australia'' highest mountain, Mt Kosciusko. These fascinating canyons stretch over more than 150 kilometres to the south of Kangaroo Island off the South Australia coast and are a virtually unknown Australian geological treasure.
Produced by Geoscience Australia, the digital fly-through shows detailed images of the immense underwater canyon system that extends into the sea from the Murray River. This information and other new data was collected during the recent AUSCAN research voyage, which includes a core sample from the Murray Canyons that contains information on Australia's climate over the last 250,000 years.
The AUSCAN voyage was funded by the Federal Government's National Oceans Office (NOO) and the French Polar Institute with contributions from Australian National University (ANU), Geoscience Australia and the South Australian Research and Development Institute.
"We will combine the swath data from the AUSCAN voyage with seismic data of the Murray Canyons region to get a better picture of the geology from the sea floor down to five kilometres or more into the earth. Together with information from sediment cores being studied by ANU geologists, this will increase our understanding of the region's evolution," said Geoscience Australia senior scientist, Peter Hill.
More than one million point gravity measurements are included in the latest Australian National Gravity Database which will be released on 30 May 2003.
New additions to the database improve the Australia-wide coverage of gravity data.
The 2003 edition incorporates both onshore and off-shore data and includes over 390 000 more gravity stations than last year's edition.
A cooperative effort between Geoscience Australia, state and territory Geological Surveys, private companies, universities and other organisations, the database is being upgraded continually as new gravity data are added and the updated version is released annually.
Read more about the Australian National Gravity Database release.
The updated Index of Airborne Geophysical Surveys (Seventh Edition) and associated index maps and digital files will also be released on 30 May 2003.
Geoscience Australia maintains metadata databases of government airborne geophysical surveys and gravity surveys. A range of products is released from these databases to assist private companies and other organisations in planning exploration and geoscientific research activities. The products being released on 30 May 2003 include: