AndreaBozzo/ceres-open-data-index huggingface dataset:
A conceptual surrogacy framework to evaluate the habitat potential of submarine canyons

The seascape of the vast Australian continental margin is characterised by numerous submarine canyons that represent an equally vast array of geomorphic and oceanographic heterogeneity. Theoretically, this heterogeneity translates into habitats that may vary equally widely in their ecological characteristics. Here we describe the methodology to develop a framework to broadly derive estimates of potential habitat condition (¿suitability¿ sensu lato) for pelagic and epibenthic megafauna (including demersal fishes), and benthic infauna in all of Australia¿s known submarine canyons.  We find that the high geomorphic and oceanographic diversity of submarine canyons creates a multitude of potential habitat types. In general, it appears that canyons may be particularly high-quality for benthic species. Canyons that incise the shelf tend to score higher in habitat potential than those confined to the slope. Canyons with particularly high habitat potential are located mainly off the Great Barrier Reef, the NSW coast, the eastern margin of Tasmania and Bass Strait, and on the southern margin. Many of these canyons have complex bottom topography, are likely to be productive, and have less intense sediment disturbance regimes. The framework presented here can be relevant ¿ once refined and comprehensively validated with ecological data - in a management and conservation context to identify canyons (or groups of canyons) that are likely to represent high-value habitat along a vast continental margin where marine planning decisions may require spatial prioritization decisions.
Citation: Zhi Huang, Thomas A. Schlacher, Scott Nichol, Alan Williams, Franziska Althaus, Rudy Kloser, A conceptual surrogacy framework to evaluate the habitat potential of submarine canyons, Progress in Oceanography, Volume 169, 2018, Pages 199-213, ISSN 0079-6611,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2017.11.007

Tags: EARTH SCIENCES, Published_External, continental margin, fauna environmental association, habitat diversity, niches, predictions, spatial planning
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data
Coral-fish tank-based nutrient interactions

To investigate the potential nutrient enrichment of corals by fish wastes, Acropora kenti, Pocillopora verrucosa, Poritesa lutea and Platygyra daedalea colonies were collected from the GBR in Feb 2022, then returned to AIMS&#39;s National Sea Simulator. Coral were sampled for protein/symbiont density, then fragmented into smaller (~10g) pieces and aloowed to recover and acclimate to the captive conditions for 1.5 months. Corals were then randomally allocated to treatments where they were either 1) kept with a school of 10 juvenile Chromis viridis fed a pelleted diet, 2) supplied filtered water from a tank housing C. viridis, 3) fed live feeds (enriched Artemia/rotifers and microalgae mix) whilst maintained with C. viridis, 4) supplied only with the live feeds, 5) supplied with a pelleted fish diet without C. viridis, and 6) not supplied feeds and without C. viridis, with four replicate tanks per treatment. During the experiment survival of corals was monitored, growth was measured using bouyant weight and photosynthetic efficiency tracked using dark adapated maximum quantum yield (Fv/Fm). At the end of the experiment, a subset of the samples were frozen and tissue stripped using high-pressure air and filtered seawater. The resulting tissue slurry was homogenised, then used to measure protein contect via a BCA assay and symbiont density using a BD Acurri C6 Flow Cytometer. 
Water quailty samples were taken weekly throughout the experiment, and analysed for NH4, NO2, NO3, PO4, DOC, PN and PC. Fish were anaethatised using Aqui-S at the end of the experiment and weighed.

Organization: Australian Ocean Data Network
Backing food product claims with evidence

This article is to be published in the industry journal "Food Australia". The article describes the motivation for a collaborative project between CSIRO, GA, ANSTO and NMI to create a federated data platform to share and deliver environment isotopic data, to support verification of where Australian agricultural and food products come from and how they were grown. The project is funded by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) as part of its Food Security Data Challenges program.
Citation: Welti, N., Fraser, G., Gerber, C., Kethers, S., &amp; Flick, L. (2024). Backing food product claims with evidence. Food Australia, 76(2), 14–17. 
https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.T2024051600004100587971500

Tags: ANSTO, ARDC, CSIRO, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES, Published_External, agriculture, data management, isotopes, provenance
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data
Green Steel: Synergies between the Australian Iron Ore Industry and the Production of Green Hydrogen

Green steel, produced using renewable energy and hydrogen, presents a promising avenue to decarbonize steel manufacturing and expand the hydrogen industry. Australia, endowed with abundant renewable resources and iron ore deposits, is ideally placed to support this global effort. This paper's two-step analytical approach offers the first comprehensive assessment of Australia's potential to develop green steel as a value-added export commodity. The Economic Fairways modelling reveals a strong alignment between prospective hydrogen hubs and current and future iron ore operations, enabling shared infrastructure development and first-mover advantages. By employing a site-based system optimization that integrates both wind and solar power sources, the cost of producing green steel could decrease significantly to around AU$900 per tonne by 2030 and AU$750 per tonne by 2050. Moreover, replacing 1% of global steel production would require 35 GW of well-optimized wind and solar photovoltaics, 16 GW of hydrogen electrolysers, and 1000 square kilometres of land. Sensitivity analysis further indicates that iron ore prices would exert a long-term influence on green steel prices. Overall, this study highlights the opportunities and challenges facing the Australian iron ore industry in contributing to the decarbonization of the global steel sector, underscoring the crucial role of government support in driving the growth and development of the green steel industry.
Citation:
Wang C et al., Green steel: Synergies between the Australian iron ore industry and the production of green hydrogen, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Volume 48, Issue 81, 1 October 2023, Pages 32277-32293, ISSN 0360-3199.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2023.05.041

Tags: EARTH SCIENCES, ECONOMICS, EFTF, Economic Fairways, Exploring for the Future, Hydrogen, Hydrogen Studies, Published_External, RESOURCES ENGINEERING AND EXTRACTIVE METALLURGY, Resource economics, energy system modelling, green steel, industrial decarbonisation, renewable energy
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data
Global distribution of sediment-hosted metals controlled by craton edge stability

Sustainable development and transition to a clean-energy economy is placing ever-increasing demand on global supplies of base metals (copper, lead, zinc and nickel). Alarmingly, this demand is outstripping the present rate of discovery of new deposits, with signifcant shortfalls forecast in the coming decades. Thus, to maintain growth in global living standards, dramatic improvements in exploration success rate are an essential goal of the geoscience community. Signifcant quantities of base metals have been deposited by low-temperature hydrothermal circulation within sedimentary basins over the last 2 billion years. Despite over a century of research, relationships between these deposits and geological structures remain enigmatic. Here, for the frst time, we show that 85% of sediment-hosted base metals, including all giant deposits (&gt; 10 megatonnes of metal), occur within 200 km of the edges of thick lithosphere, mapped using surface wave tomography and a parameterisation for anelasticity at seismic frequencies. This remarkable observation implies long-term lithospheric edge stability and a genetic link between deep Earth processes and near-surface hydrothermal mineral systems. This result provides an unprecedented global framework for identifying fertile regions for targeted mineral exploration, reducing the search-space for new deposits by two-thirds on this lithospheric thickness criterion alone.
Citation: Hoggard, M.J., Czarnota, K., Richards, F.D. et al. Global distribution of sediment-hosted metals controlled by craton edge stability. Nat. Geosci.13, 504–510 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0593-2

Tags: EARTH SCIENCES, Exploring for the Future - EFTF, Published_External, base metals, deposits, lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary, mantle, mineral systems, sediment-hosted
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data
Chronostratigraphic basin framework for Palaeoproterozoic rocks (1730–1575 Ma) in northern Australia and implications for base‐metal mineralisation

Sequence‐stratigraphic interpretations of outcrop, drillcore, wireline and seismic datasets are integrated with SHRIMP zircon and palaeomagnetic determinations to provide a detailed chrono‐stratigraphic basin framework for the base‐metal‐rich Palaeoproterozoic rocks of the southern McArthur, Lawn Hill and Mt Isa regions. The analysis forms a basis for future correlations across northern Australia. Nine second‐order unconformity‐bounded supersequences are identified. Supersequences have a duration of 10–20 million years; some hitherto‐unrecognised unconformity surfaces record up to 25 million years of missing rock record. The second‐order supersequences contain a series of nested third‐, fourth‐ and fifth‐order sequences many of which can be correlated across the Mt Isa, Lawn Hill and southern McArthur regions. The analysis relates accommodation history to major intraplate tectonic events evident on the apparent polar wander path for northern Australia. Major tectonic events at approximately 1735 Ma, 1700 Ma, 1670 Ma, 1650 Ma, 1640 Ma, 1615 Ma, 1600 Ma and 1575 Ma impacted on accommodation rates and basin shape in northern Australia. Sub‐basin depocentres, the hosts for major sulfide mineralisation, are attributed to reactivated faults that controlled local subsidence. Pb/Pb model ages of 1653 Ma, 1640 Ma and 1575 Ma for the Mt Isa, McArthur River and Century Pb–Zn–Ag deposits, suggest that changes to intraplate stresses at tectonic events of like age resulted in the migration of metal‐bearing fluids into the sub‐basins. A Pb/Pb model age of 1675 for the Broken Hill deposit suggests that intraplate stresses manifest in northern Australia also affected rocks of similar age further south. Magmatic events close to 1700 Ma (Weberra Granite) and 1675 Ma (Sybella Granite) coincide with times of regional incision and the formation of supersequence‐bounding unconformity surfaces.
Citation: Southgate, P. N., Bradshaw, B. E., Domagala, J., Jackson, M. J., Idnurm, M., Krassay, A. A., … Tarlowski, C. (2000). Chronostratigraphic basin framework for Palaeoproterozoic rocks (1730–1575 Ma) in northern Australia and implications for base‐metal mineralisation. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 47(3), 461–483. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1440-0952.2000.00787.x

Tags: Earth Sciences, External Publication, McArthur region, Mt Isa region, Paleoproterozoic, Published_External, Scientific Journal Paper, base-metal deposits, geochronology, lithostratigraphy, mineral deposits, sequence stratigraphy, stratiform deposits
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data
Groundwater geochemistry, hydrogeology and potash mineral potential of the Lake Woods region, Northern Territory, Australia

We collected 38 groundwater and two surface water samples in the semi-arid Lake Woods region of the Northern Territory to better understand the hydrogeochemistry of this system, which straddles the Wiso, Tennant Creek and Georgina geological regions. Lake Woods is presently a losing waterbody feeding the underlying groundwater system. The main aquifers comprise mainly carbonate (limestone and dolostone), siliciclastic (sandstone and siltstone) and evaporitic units. The water composition was determined in terms of bulk properties (pH, electrical conductivity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, redox potential), 40 major, minor and trace elements as well as six isotopes (δ18Owater, δ2Hwater, δ13CDIC, δ34SSO4=, δ18OSO4=, 87Sr/86Sr). The groundwater is recharged through infiltration in the catchment from monsoonal rainfall (annual average rainfall ~600 mm) and runoff. It evolves geochemically mainly through evapotranspiration and water–mineral interaction (dissolution of carbonates, silicates, and to a lesser extent sulfates). The two surface waters (one from the main creek feeding the lake, the other from the lake itself) are extraordinarily enriched in 18O and 2H isotopes (δ18O of +10.9 and +16.4 ‰ VSMOW, and δ2H of +41 and +93 ‰ VSMOW, respectively), which is interpreted to reflect evaporation during the dry season (annual average evaporation ~3000 mm) under low humidity conditions (annual average relative humidity ~40 %). This interpretation is supported by modelling results. The potassium (K) relative enrichment (K/Cl mass ratio over 50 times that of sea water) is similar to that observed in salt-lake systems worldwide that are prospective for potash resources. Potassium enrichment is believed to derive partly from dust during atmospheric transport/deposition, but mostly from weathering of K-silicates in the aquifer materials (and possibly underlying formations). Further studies of Australian salt-lake systems are required to reach evidence-based conclusions on their mineral potential for potash, lithium, boron and other low-temperature mineral system commodities such as uranium.
Citation: P. de Caritat, E. N. Bastrakov, S. Jaireth, P. M. English, J. D. A. Clarke, T. P. Mernagh, A. S. Wygralak, H. E. Dulfer &amp; J. Trafford (2019) Groundwater geochemistry, hydrogeology and potash mineral potential of the Lake Woods region, Northern Territory, Australia, Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 66:3, 411-430, DOI: 10.1080/08120099.2018.1543208

Tags: Australia, EARTH SCIENCES, Published_External, groundwater, hydrogeochemistry, mineral systems, potash, processes
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data
Unlocking Antarctica: Building an Open Access Satellite Data Platform

Access to quality satellite data for wide-scale analysis and monitoring is essential for supporting Antarctic science, operations and management. We are building a new platform, based on Open Data Cube technology, to enable access to corrected continental scale satellite data for all of Antarctica and its surrounding areas of sea ice. This platform will provide users with openly accessible time-series data corrected and validated for Antarctic conditions for the first time, unlocking a vast resource of data spanning decades. The need for monitoring and understanding change across Antarctica has never been greater with rapid changes in sea ice, ice sheets and the oceans now observed and forecast to increase over coming decades with far-reaching consequences for global climate, sea level rise, ocean circulation and dependent ecosystems. Continued satellite monitoring, and the development of infrastructure that ensures data discovery and analysis, is critical for supporting our Antarctic science capability and providing a robust basis for decision makers. 
This presentation will provide an overview of the Digital Earth Antarctica platform and the planned processing pipelines that will produce analysis ready optical and SAR data. We will demonstrate the wealth of opportunities that will be unlocked to observe, monitor and understand Antarctic systems.
Presented at the 2024 Australian Antarctic Research Conference

Tags: EARTH SCIENCES, Published_External
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data
An information theoretic Bayesian uncertainty analysis of AEM systems over Menindee Lake, Australia

Long-range, active-source airborne electromagnetic (AEM) systems for near-surface imaging fall into two categories: helicopter borne or fixed-wing aircraft borne. A multitude of factors such as flying height, transmitter loop area and current, source waveforms, aerodynamic stability and data stacking times contribute to the geological resolvability of the subsurface. A comprehensive comparison of the relative merits of each system considering all such factors is difficult, but test flights over known subsurface geology with downhole induction logs are extremely useful for resolution studies. Further, given the non-linear nature of the electromagnetic inverse problem, handling transmitter-receiver geometries in fixed-wing aircraft is especially challenging. As a consequence of this nonlinearity, inspecting the closeness of downhole conductivities to deterministic inversion results is not sufficient for studying resolvability. A more comprehensive picture is provided by examining the width of the depth-wise Bayesian posterior conductivity distributions for each kind of system. For this purpose, probabilistic inversions of data must be carried out -- with acquisition over the same geology, survey noise levels must be measured, and the same prior probabilities on conductivity must be used. With both synthetic models as well as real data from over the Menindee calibration range in New South Wales, Australia, we shed new light on the matter of AEM inverse model resolution. Specifically, we use a novel Bayesian inversion scheme which handles fixed-wing geometry attributes as generic nuisance parameters during Markov chain sampling. Our findings have useful implications in AEM system selection, as well as in the design of better deterministic AEM inversion algorithms.
Citation: Anandaroop Ray, Yusen Ley-Cooper, Ross C Brodie, Richard Taylor, Neil Symington, Negin F Moghaddam, An information theoretic Bayesian uncertainty analysis of AEM systems over Menindee Lake, Australia, Geophysical Journal International, Volume 235, Issue 2, November 2023, Pages 1888–1911,  https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggad337

Tags: Australia’s Resources Framework project, EFTF – Exploring for the Future, Electrical and Electromagnetic Methods in Geophysics, Published_External, airborne electromagnetics, airborne geophysics, geology
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data
Regolith research in Australia

Regolith science is a multidisciplinary, comparatively recent ﬁeld, having evolved from several older disciplines: geology, geomorphology, soil science, and geography. Initially, practitioners drew on terms from these varied sources, not always understanding them fully or using them accurately, leading to persistent misunderstandings and confusion around terminology. The term “regolith” was introduced by Merrill (1897), who wrote of the incoherent mass of varying thickness covering the underlying rocks, later clariﬁed and redeﬁned in The Regolith Glossary (Eggleton 2001) as: “the entire unconsolidated or secondarily recemented cover that overlies more coherent bedrock, that has been formed by weathering, erosion, trans-port and/or deposition of the older material. The regolith thus includes fractured and weathered basement rocks, saprolites,soils, organic accumulations, volcanic material, glacial depos-its, colluvium, alluvium, evaporitic sediments, aeolian deposits and groundwater”. Or, in simple terms: “everything from fresh rock, to fresh air.”
Most of the continents, which were once part of Gondwana (Africa, India, Australia and South America), have old land surfaces and deep regolith. However, the extent of regolith and its preservation in Australia are exceptional. The Australian land-scape is remarkable for its relative ﬂatness, dominated by low elevations (Pain, Pillans, Roach, Worrall, &amp; Wilford, 2012) with some areas exposed at the surface since the Precambrian, some since the Paleozoic and the rest since the Mesozoic or Cenozoic. This results in ancient weathering mantles that, may be over100 m thick. Signiﬁcant denudation is predominantly limited tothe continental margins, resulting in old landforms and weathering proﬁles that are much more likely to persist in Australia than in other Gondwanan continents (Scott &amp; Pain, 2008)
Citation: Thomas, M., &amp; Wong, V. N. L. (2017). 'Regolith research in Australia'. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 64(8), pp. 983–985. doi:10.1080/08120099.2017.1396252

Tags: Australia, Gondwana, Published_External, cover, environment, exploration, landforms, mapping, regolith, resource managements
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data
Forensic soil provenancing in an urban/suburban setting: a simultaneous multivariate approach

Soil is a ubiquitous material at the Earth's surface with potential to be a useful evidence class in forensic and intelligence applications. Compositional data from a soil survey over North Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, are used to develop and test an empirical soil provenancing method. Mineralogical data from Fourier Transform InfraRed spectroscopy (FTIR) and geochemical data from X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF; for total major oxides) and Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS; for both total and aqua regia-soluble trace elements) are obtained from the survey's 268 topsoil samples (0–5 cm depth; 1 sample per km2). The simultaneous provenancing approach is underpinned by (i) the calculation of Spearman's correlation coefficients (rS) between an evidentiary sample and all the samples in the database for all variables generated by each analytical method; and (ii) the preparation of an interpolated raster grid of rS for each evidentiary sample and method resulting in a series of provenance rasters (“heat maps”). The simultaneous provenancing method is tested on the North Canberra soil survey with three “blind” samples representing simulated evidentiary samples. Performance metrics of precision and accuracy indicate that the FTIR (mineralogy) and XRF (geochemistry) analytical methods offer the most precise and accurate provenance predictions. Maximizing the number of analytes/analytical techniques is advantageous in soil provenancing. Despite acknowledged limitations, it is concluded that the empirical soil provenancing approach can play an important role in forensic and intelligence applications.
Citation: de Caritat, P, Woods, B, Simpson, T, Nichols, C, Hoogenboom, L, Ilheo, A, et al. Forensic soil provenancing in an urban/suburban setting: A simultaneous multivariate approach. J Forensic Sci. 2022; 67: 927–935. https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.14967

Tags: EARTH SCIENCES, Geographic Information System (GIS), Published_External, Soil forensics, Spearman correlation coefficients (rS), geochemical mapping, interpolation, performance, soil properties
Organization: Geoscience Australia Data