MinEx CRC is the world's largest mineral exploration research collaboration, bringing together industry, government and research organisations. The National Drilling Initiative (NDI) is a part of the CRC that brings together government and university geoscience departments from across Australia in the common goal of improving understanding of Australia’s mineral resources.
The Earth resources sector is a vital part of Australia’s economy, and our future wellbeing demands a continuing pipeline of discovery. The NDI precompetitive stratigraphic drilling campaigns have been conducted in the frontier regions of East Tennant (NT), South Nicholson (NT), Delamerian Orogen (SA and NSW), Paterson (WA) and Eucla (WA), with others to come. Each campaign has provided new rock chip and core samples from key regolith and basement units , some of which have never previously been sampled. New technology developed by NDI researchers and applied to the drilling campaign areas includes the following:
Regolith characterisation has been made easier by new software that produce pseudologs through multivariate analysis of rapid field-acquired geochemical, hyperspectral and petrophysical data. While developed specifically to aid identification of boundaries in regolith, the method also can be applied to basement stratigraphy.
New dating methods allow rapid characterisation of stratigraphic, tectonic and alteration events. Microanalytical techniques using laser ablation same-mass isotopes allow a much wider range of minerals to be analysed in their petrogenetic/lithologic/paragenetic contexts – especially important as we study new styles of critical mineral deposits. Diffusion modelling of high precision Ar-Ar plateau spectra allows an extensive thermal history to be revealed from tiny amounts of material.
New software is being developed to maximise the information gained from chemical and isotopic micro-mapping of samples. This allows better predictions of the mineral potential of a region from the study of just a few uneconomic mineral occurrences, which are often found before major deposits are.
The collaboration between MinEx CRC researchers and geological surveys has proven very powerful in both trialling new analytical methods, but also to provide a much more rapid, informed geological framework in frontier covered terranes than has previously been possible. Web portals with analytical tools facilitate data delivery to explorers more promptly after drilling, allowing faster investment decision making, which is necessary to keep investment in Australia to support the transition to a low carbon economy.
Presented at the 2024 International Applied Geochemistry Symposium (IAG2024)
