Environmental and urban geology in Australia: workshop meeting of government engineering geologists, November, 1976

Environmental and urban geology is an expanding field in which the government geological surveys are inevitably becoming more involved. Throughout the world, pressures for urban development and the exploitation of resources are coinciding with a growing awareness of threats to the environment. Phillip (1976) has recently reviewed the status of environmental geology in Australia, and indicated its development particularly in relation to land-use planning. Several papers in the 25th International Geological Congress held at Sydney in August 1976, described geological contributions to environmental management in Australia. These papers included reports of the urban geology of Sydney (Burgess, in press); the environmental geology of the Western Australian coastal limestone (Gordon, 1976); landslides affecting urban development in Tasmania (Knights and Matthews, 1976); engineering geology for subdivisional planning in South Australia (Selby, 1976); environmental geological mapping for land-use planning in Queensland (Hofmann, 1976); geological aspects of the pollution of coastal lagoons in New South Wales (Albani and Brown, 1976); and quarry reclamation problems in Victoria (Bowen, 1976). Interest aroused at the Congress led to a workshop meeting of government survey geologists concerned with environmental and urban geology being held in Canberra, 15-17 November 1976. Participants included W. S. Chesnut and I. Wallace (New South Wales Geological Survey); K. G. Bowen and J. L. Neilson (Victorian Geological Survey); G. W. Hofmann (Geological Survey of Queensland); J. Selby (South Australian Geological Survey); P. C. Stevenson (Geological Survey of Tasmania); E. G. Wilson, G. Jacobson, P. D. Hohnen, P. H. Vanden Broek, G. A. M. Henderson and R. C. M. Goldsmith (BMR); J. C. Braybrooke (SMEC); and other Commonwealth government personnel. At the meeting, government activity in environmental and urban geology was reviewed; abstracts of these reviews are given below, and illustrate the wide range of investigations in this field currently being undertaken by the geological surveys. The meeting included discussion of specific problems encountered in environmental geology investigations (see below); and a field inspection of the urban geology of Tuggeranong, A.C.T.